Mzantsi(South Africa), At The Cusp Of Implosion: Crisis In The Land Of The Africans South Of Africa: Whither Azania

Inability to Speak Helps You Qualify for the The Enabling Of The Gravy Train

South Africa's great thirst has begun

This is my first Hub on this Post, and I am writing it against my better judgement because the issues to be discussed here affects me personally and greatly. Maybe I might have a clouded perspective and judgement when writing this Hub. But, since I recognize that we live in a state of great confusion, I will pick-up those issues that are immediate and briefly talk about them.

There is a problem of water, electricity, job-scarcity, break up of families, in-fighting amongst family members, drugs, great opulence in the face of heart-wrenching poverty, that, in a nutshell, there's a cascading feeling like there is now uncertainty, danger, and general disorder and lawlessness. This can easily be seen on many fronts, and particularly in the Media(SABC), and may other areas of social endeavor. What one finds is downright corruption, intimidation, assassination, murders, and seriously thuggerism that has never ever been seen in these parts of the woods I hang out in.

Ever since the ANC took over, too many things have come to pass, and many have not. One of the by-words used by the ANC, is to say the leadership they groomed in exile, is the one running the country-that, the ANC will rule until Jesus Comes. What that grooming entails, is not what I would like to talk about here. I think a lot has been written about Apartheid, and it is time we really focus on the ANC and its membership. Dealing with the Cabals within this coterie of self-enriched potentates pilfering on the coffers of the poor, knows no bounds. This can be seen in many instances were one to ask, for instance, the denizens of the Soweto enclaves-as will be seen below within this Hub in the case of the People Of Orlando..

Or, one could read up on the Newspapers online from South Africa, or listen to the Radio Stations in their various languages to get a sense of what is happening in South Africa.

Crisis Has Happened To South Africa.

We can talk briefly about the Water Wars, or Struggles or lack-there-of for the people of various Townships throughout South Africa. I would like to Cull From an article taken from the Mail & Guardian, written by Sipho Kings, Sarah Wild, Rapula Moatshe and Phillip De Wet below:

For many South Africans, the water crisis is already here. For others, research and projections show, it is only a matter of time — and perhaps not a great deal of time.

Thanks to load-shedding, and a shortage of water when electricity is restricted, the thirsty future could arrive in major urban centres as soon as this summer.

Eskom's electricity woes have hastened the failure of water infrastructure around the country.

Early last year, four people died in violent protests over a lack of water in the Mothotlung township outside Brits in North West. In the glare of national publicity, water was quickly restored.

But on Monday, almost exactly a year later, taps in the township again ran dry. When the water flowed again on Tuesday, it was brown.

“I am scared to drink water from the tap. I only use it for bathing and washing clothes. I do buy water from the tuck shop when I have money,” said 72-year-old widow Johana Ngwato.

“My daughter is six years old and, whenever she takes the water, she experiences diarrhea,” said Ngwato’s niece, Baile Masango.

Grahamstown MarchIn 2013, a two-week water outage in Grahamstown saw academics, in their formal caps and gowns, march in lockstep on the city council offices, with township residents following, brandishing placards.

Rhodes University, the lifeblood of the town, issued a stark warning that garnered national attention: without water it would have to close its doors.

On Monday night, the water supply went off again without warning in a section of the township overlooking Grahamstown, leaving Tembinkosi Mhlakaza to wonder at what point he should go to fetch water for his grandmother, and how far he would have to go to get it.

“She’s nearly 80,” Mhlakaza said. “Our water went out last night, and it may come on this afternoon. But if it doesn’t, I have to make a plan for her.”

Supply failures In 2014, the residents of Thlolong outside Kestell in the Free State were promised that a new dam would solve their water woes. On Wednesday, a resident, who did not want to be named for fear of reprisal, said neither the dam nor emergency water supplies were anywhere to be seen.

“We are thirsty. It has been eight years now that we live like this. The tankers that the municipality use to bring us water are not here this week; we didn’t see them last week. We don’t know what we must do now.”

In Johannesburg, some suburbs were warned this week to expect weekend water outages because of scheduled maintenance at a pumping station — the same station that left some of the same suburbs, and some hospitals, without water for days last year. The maintenance plan was later postponed.

These are no longer isolated cases. According to government officials, about a third of all towns are in some form of serious water distress. The department of water considers one in 10 municipal water systems to be totally dysfunctional, and, of those that are working, a quarter experiences regular service disruptions of more than two days at a time.

In provinces such as Mpumalanga, there are more households that have regular water interruptions than those with a steady supply.

Municipal incompetenceIn Mothotlung and Grahamstown, the water supply issues can be linked directly to municipal incompetence, a lack of engineering skills and the failure of management. Neither area has a shortage of untreated water, but they are going thirsty because of a lack of maintenance and proper financial administration and planning.

These problems show no signs of abating, as bitter experience shows.

“If you give me the money and people, I can fix it up for good,” said a Grahamstown City engineer, who is not authorized to speak to the media. “Without money and people, I’ll keep it running as long as I can. Just don’t ask me to fix it quickly when it really all breaks down; then you can keep your money.”

In Johannesburg, water shortages in 2014 were caused by electricity failure to a key pumping station, which in turn was linked to cable theft.

With Eskom warning that there will be regular load-shedding for the rest of the summer, and unable to deliver consistent power for several more years, water engineers are trying to work out how to manage shortages.

Meagre reserve marginsIn many areas, water systems have either little or very meagre reserve margins. Electricity outages at pumps that move raw water could leave treatment stations without water. And, without treated water to move, pumps responsible for distribution would be idle when they do get electricity.

These two factors — local incompetence and a national electricity shortage — will have the biggest impact on what, if anything, comes out of the taps for the next several years.

But, within the next decade, two other fundamental issues are likely to make themselves felt — problems that no amount of local governing excellence or electricity will solve.

For one, there is simply not enough water left to go around.

Johana Ngwato says she is too scared to drink the water in Mothotlung. (Gustav Butlex)

“The situation currently in South Africa is that we have 98% of the water in the country being considered fully allocated. This means that my child and your child that is being born tomorrow has 2% of water for use going into the future,” then water minister Edna Molewa said of water usage rights in 2013.

Eskom firstEskom has a 99.5% assurance of receiving water, meaning the power utility gets water before any other sector of the economy.

The 2030 Water Resources Group, of which the department is a member, has calculated that, by 2030, the demand for water will exceed supply by 17%. In most of South Africa’s catchments, demand is already outstripping supply, and it is only by piping water from places such as Lesotho that there is enough for now.

Climate change projections are that, by mid-century, reduced rainfall could lower the amount of available water by 10%. Rainfall is expected to come in shorter, but more violent, spells. The projections say this will make collection in dams and underground difficult.

Exactly how much water is available is a complex calculation, with many variables and estimates to consider, and it is seasonal, to boot.

In lay terms, the easy water is already being harvested. Major South African rivers have been dammed to maximum capacity — there are nearly 4?400 registered dams – and some would argue beyond their capacity; river systems require what is sometimes referred to as an “ecological reserve," a minimum amount of water to continue functioning and be useful.

Barriers to supplyWater systems that could handle new dams are both far from population centers and limited in their ability to supply water.

“Many parts of the country have either reached or are fast approaching the point at which all of the financially viable freshwater resources are fully utilized and where building new dams will not address the challenges,” the department of water affairs said in its 2013 strategy report.

That leaves South Africa more dependent than ever on water pumped from Lesotho, where a new phase of the Highlands water scheme will come on line in 2020.

But all the run-off from Lesotho must inevitably flow through South Africa to the ocean, making even that water-rich country a finite resource for South Africans.

An increase in global temperatures is expected to increase evaporation from dams, which potentially makes building more an exercise in running on the spot rather than getting ahead.

More groundwater can be exploited, but only by so much. Desalination is possible, but it requires large amounts of electricity and is very expensive.

Little to go aroundThat all leaves little untreated water to go around, even without the expected increases in municipal use, because of a growing population, agricultural use, which is increasing the amount of land under irrigation and is a mainstay of plans to improve both employment and food security, and industrial use.

“Increases in water supply cannot match the expected increase in demand without additional and far-reaching interventions,” Steve Hedden and Jakkie Cilliers, of the Institute for Security Studies, wrote in a September 2014 paper. “The water crisis cannot be solved through engineering alone.”

The second structural problem is an unfolding ecological ­disaster, which is making available water more difficult to treat and, eventually and without intervention, will make direct use of untreated water impossible.

“Water ecosystems are not in a healthy state,” according to the department of water affairs’ National Water Resource Strategy 2013. “Of the 233 river ecosystem types, 60% are threatened, with 25% of these critically endangered … Of 792 wetland ecosystems, 65% have been identified as threatened, and 48% as critically endangered.”

Human WasteThe sources of pollution in fresh water include industrial run-off and acid mine drainage, but human waste is a larger and more immediately dangerous component, ironically because of the large amount of water South Africans use.

“Most waste water treatment facilities are under stress because so much more waste water needs to be treated,” said Gunnar Sigge, head of Stellenbosch University’s department of food science and one of those involved in a seminal — and alarming – 2012 study for the Water Research Commission.

“Some of the biggest problems [in the water system] are caused by treatment works that aren’t functioning.”

Jo Barnes, a specialist in community health risks at Stellenbosch, said a chronic lack of investment in treatment plants meant conditions that should not exist, such as diarrhea, were killing people.

“The whole environment where people live is contaminated. This is a massive, massive problem, but one that people will not talk about. There are just a few angry people trying to raise awareness.”

The 2012 study, carried out in all the provinces and over a three-to-four year period, found that the amount of faecal matter in many water systems made it unsafe for irrigation, because eating raw produce watered with it could cause illness.

Informal settlementsInformal settlements both contribute to the pollution and are affected by it, and some draw directly on groundwater. According to the department of human settlements, the number of informal settlements rose from 300 in 1994 to about 2,700 today, housing 1.3-million families.

In Mothotlung, Serube Lukhelo is afraid to give her one-year-old baby water that could cause diarrhea, so she spends what money she has on bottled water.

In Grahamstown’s Joza location, Nomfundo Bentele is considering putting up a sign at her hair salon to let customers know whether she has water or not.

In Johannesburg residents and hospitals wait to hear when water from their taps will stop running.

Everywhere else the clock is ticking.

The Poverty Of Shamocracy" - Fat-Cats Living Large

t is reported that a new facility worth R2bn will be built east of Johannesburg. “Why do we build new places when we already have the facilities to build trains. Transnet Engineering could find themselves with plus minus 800 redundant employees as

Dry Run On The South African Gravy Train - Electric And Water Issues

The article above by the various authors is just one of the very serious challenges that are bearing on the poor and the government is still on a dry run of their now depleted Gravy Train. Just so that I complete the whole set of the Water Woes that Are headed or already a reality in south Africa, particularly amongst the poor, it is important to ad here some reports and what they have to say about the type of responses thus far to the article above.

Kings, Wild and Phillip inform us as follows:

South Africa's electricity crisis is a grim portent: soon, we'll be in the same boat with water.

On this at least there is consensus: South Africa faces a thirsty future — even if there is still disagreement on the important details, such as just how bad the situation is right now and when it will be appropriate to call it a crisis.

From the vantage point of early 2015 the consensus seems laughably obvious, with every study and statistic and projection in agreement and anecdotes of daily struggles too numerous to ignore.

Yet it was a hard-won consensus; as recently as 2012 those predicting trouble could still have flipped a coin to calculate the odds of being listened to versus being branded alarmist and dismissed. Only in the past two years have scientists across different disciplines and technocrats across different levels of government come to agree — with notable political exceptions (see below) — that trouble is looming. What was recently deemed alarmist has become a simple fact.

But agreement is not action and those same scientists and technocrats now find themselves watching, increasingly aghast, as water follows the same course as electricity did between 1998, when consensus about a looming crisis was reached, and 2008, when the lights actually went out for the first time.

Seven years later there is still no security of electricity supply. And, relative to water, electricity is not a particularly hard problem to solve.

On the other hand, despite the life-or-death nature of water problems, they do not capture the imagination as electricity does. Electricity goes out all at once, but water dries up by dribs and drabs as availability peters off or quality slowly deteriorates until it is not fit for human consumption.

Between 1998 and 2004 new sources of electricity were not considered because of a controversial, and eventually scrapped, plan to privatize the sector. That policy reversal was itself partially reversed when it came to renewable energy. Much the same debate continues about municipal water supply, with talk of “public-private partnerships” rather than “privatization”.

With electricity running short, a great deal of effort and money was put into attempts to reduce demand from major industrial users and ordinary citizens through education, exhortation and, eventually, downright pleading. With water the equivalent effort is reducing part of the estimated one-third of all treated water that is lost through leaks or is not paid for. But that task has proven harder and more expensive than initially thought, and flamboyant promises to halve losses by 2014 have been quietly forgotten.

Too cheapCirca 1998 electricity was too cheap to fund new supplies or bring in private suppliers, and the low price encouraged spendthrift use. Eskimo argues it is still too cheap, despite massive price hikes that were politically unpopular and economically destructive. Today the price of water is below the cost of supply.

Last year the water affairs department said municipalities owe more than R2-billion for water sold to them, and the Water Research Commission said R11-billion in revenue is lost annually because of leaks and users not paying their dues. Eskimo, too, is owed enormous amounts by municipalities and a problem with illegal connections. To date the utility has not been able to collect debt effectively or contain theft.

Water prices have never reflected costs because keeping the price low encouraged agriculture and industry, and kept the lid on the cost of living. To get around the implications, the water department established the Trans-Caledon Tunnel Authority to finance big projects. This independent vehicle could get cheap loans because it had a functional business model and was not undermined by municipalities, said a senior water affairs official. This is the authority working on the Lesotho Highlands water project and acid mine drainage.

“We can raise funds for big projects that pay back. But for maintaining infrastructure and building regional dams the financial model just does not work at the price we are charging for water,” said the official.

A case in point is the newly completed De Hoop Dam in Limpopo. It was built at a cost of about R5-billion to grow local mining ventures and bring water to a dry region. “The mines were supposed to pay for half of the construction costs in a public-private partnership, but they skipped out on the promise,” the official said. They will, however, pay for water as consumers. “The rest of water users will probably not pay for water, so what does that do to the books?”

The options for new water are much more expensive than the current cost of water. Water affairs figures show that recycling water is double the cost of sourcing water from dams, and water from desalination plants costs five times more.

All of this leaves, by the 2014 estimate of Water Minister Nomvula Mokonyane, a R670-billion hole where the money should be to provide water over the next 10 years. That number is up by R100-billion since her predecessor’s estimate, two years before. The money is yet to be forthcoming and the longer we wait, the more expensive it will be.

The political doublespeak of water access

Two consecutive water ministers have agreed, and Parliament has acknowledged, that whether South Africa faces a water crisis is a matter of semantics or perhaps timing. But right at the top the political establishment is still clinging to a different — and far more positive — narrative.

In his 2014 State of the Nation address President Jacob Zuma said that 95% of South Africans have “access to water," a figure that subsequently showed up on ANC election posters. Zuma hailed it as a great accomplishment, given that apartheid gave priority to white people and industry. Technically the figure may be defendable, but not by much.

“Access” requires that citizens have a water system in their area of residence — but does not mean water needs to come out of the taps consistently or in drinkable form.

The wiggle room, however, is reducing. In 2013, the Pretoria high court, ruling on demands from people in the Mpumalanga town of Carolina for sufficient water provision, said water had to be a maximum of 200 m away from people’s houses and consistently available, and that each person should have access to 25 liters a day for free. That is a detailed interpretation of a more general constitutional guarantee.

The water department has never directly contradicted Zuma and the ANC’s claim. But in response to Mail & Guardian questions it said that “reliable services are in the order of 65% nationally”. That equates to five million households, or nearly 20-million people, who do not have regular flowing water — far more than the 2.6-million people the 95% figure would suggest.

Drought Of Things To Come-Globally..

In June 2014, short-term global drought conditions remained relatively constant with degradation mainly in Asia and Africa. Asia saw drought intensify, particularly on the Indian subcontinent, in north-central Russia, on Japan, and in the Middle East

A thirsty future beckons

This piece below was written as an Editorial in the Mail & Guardian:

Water scarcity is here and we need to act now, as this is more difficult to solve than the electricity crisis.

South Africa is in the midst of a water crisis, with worse to come unless government puts money and political will where its mouth is. We are in the same situation with water that Eskom was in a decade ago with regard to the provision of electricity. We saw the signs then but did nothing.

Half of the country’s sewerage plants are not working and release polluted water into rivers, which is used by people in poor communities and to irrigate crops. People are already dying in places such as Bloemhof and there are increasingly frequent protests about water around the country. But we report on them sporadically, rather than seeing the wood for the trees.

Unlike electricity, though, water scarcity is more difficult to solve: South Africa is developing and the water infrastructure just cannot keep up; municipalities struggle to attract and retain skills to maintain water treatment plants and corruption pokes holes in a money bucket that was not full enough to begin with. About R11-billion worth of water leaks away through rusty pipes or is stolen every year.

But to make decisions, we need data: the Blue Drop report into water treatment plants does not look at water quality, and the Green Drop report into sewerage plants has quietly vanished. The water affairs department says it needs R670-billion to fix infrastructure and to build for a growing population, but it only has half of this and is hoping for public-private partnerships.

But, like electricity a decade ago, water is too cheap to attract private sector investment. Ironically, power plants need water to give us electricity and the water pumps need power to give us clean water. Although the next few years of sporadic electricity look bleak, a future without water is desperate, even without the specter of climate change looming on the horizon.

Yes, we are a water-scarce country, but the current scarcity is a result of poor governance and underinvestment. The ruling party claims 95% of the population has access to water, but on the ground about a third of the population — 18-million people — do not have access to water on a regular basis. This number is set to increase if we do not act now.

Coal Cripples Our Water

Thar contains 175 billion ton reserves of coal, out of which 1000 megawatts (MW) electric power may be generated for the next 30 years

A Terrifying Home-Front

That is only one or two crises that are headed our way. The other problem we have is Nepotism, favoritism, loyalty, cronyism, "Tribal Tendencies," and a whole schtick of much-ado-about nothing. The last point, although seemingly innocuously generalized and unspecific, in fact, in the context I am about to talk about in South Africa, it matters a great deal.

Unemployment is rife and chronic. Food prices have gone up drastically, so has Gasoline. The Rand is around Rands per One Dollar; Everything else is topsy-turvy and going downhill in social delivery and governance; corruption is the norm; miseducation and lack thereof Dumbs Down everyone else; Clowns in parliament entertain us, whilst nothing of note gets done, except shady deals and other crooked maneuvering which are the present modus operandi; nurses are poorly trained and causing havoc in the hospitals; teachers in many schools, high schools and those of Higher learning are inept, and there's a dire shortage of teachers and nursing training colleges. The inhabitants of the country have never felt so insecure and scared; nobody really knows what's going to happen next.

Drugs are wiping out whole communities and families; Drugs like Nyaope, Whoonga and the like are the staple and have decimated many in our midst. Diseases like HIV/Aids are still smoldering and snuffing huge chunks of life out the poor and unemployed armies of the dispossessed; massive amounts of money are spent frivolously and wasted by the Honchos who hold sway on every aspect of power in the country. Intimidation and other forms of coercion are the way life has come to be realized and known to be like in the country; there's a huge growth of slums, foreign underemployed, poorly employed workers from north Africa; there's a lot of racism, xenophobia, strikes, everyone chasing fantom tenders, and even if they are real, many do not even know what to do with them once they get them, of course, through crooked means.

Mzantsi today is a very intriguing country for it seems to be the playground for all, and these foreigners, in our land, tell us where to get off, for they can see all this confusion and disunity that we are perpetuating amongst ourselves; Of course, that is the legacy of Apartheid we carried-over into the Rule of the ANC, who are hell-bent of retaining and containing the present decrepit social miasma.

So that, upon reading the posted articles above, one can glean what I am talking about from many parts of these articles.

Half of the country's sewerage plants are not working, and they release polluted concoctions into the rivers. Apparently these rivers are used by the poor in their dilapidated communities. The present government cannot keep up with the building of water infrastructure; municipalities are hard-pressed to contain and retain enough skilled personnel to take care of water treatment plats. Upwards of 12 Billion Rands of water leaks from rusted and old pipes account for water waster. In my Township, there's always a leak which takes many months up to years without being attended to by any government entity.

Electricity which too is being rationed, is one other aspect which is not really talked about much, but it affects millions of poor people in South Africa. Some of the electricity in South Africa is sold to North Africa, which has issues of lack of electricity, Some of it is sold for a song - 4 cents per kilowatt hour to the Big mega-companies; worse, some water, especially the water in our aquifers and underground rivers is being redirected to the burgeoning Coal mines and gold companies sprouting along the big Rivers in Mzantsi. What this has done, this has begun creating barren dry lands above-ground where these rivers use to flow underground, and the depletion of the aquifers, are all contributing to the drought that we read a lot about above and elsewhere.

Water Lines In Mzantsi - A New Normal... Or Is It-- Reminiscent of the Water Taps in Early 60 Townships of South africa

Each person must get a basic free allowance of 25 litres a day (a bath uses 80 litres, and flushing a toilet 10 litres). To make this easier to manage, this has been equated to 6 000 litres a household a month. The water must be available within 200m

South Africa’s water and sanitation infrastructure is crumbling because of a chronic lack of investment. The department of water affairs says it needs more than R600-billion to fix the problems. But the fiscus can only provide half of this, so the de

Water: The New Gold, but Scarce In Mzantsi

There are communities around the South Africa that are at War concerning water shortage and drought. This pas summer has witnessed these occurrences - see photo above.

Sipho Kings informs us below that:

"South Africa’s crisis is also one of availability. A report by auditing firm KPMG on the water sector this year said the country is the 30th driest in the world. Aggregated, each South African had 100 cubic meters of water a year. Annual rainfall was 500 mm, against a world average of 860 mm.

"At current consumption rates, South Africa will be using more water than it has by 2025, according to the water affairs department. By 2030, it will be using 17% more, according to the 2030 Water Resources Group.

"This is why the water affairs department needs R600-billion. Its biggest water scheme, the second phase of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project, will come online in 2022. The project already provides most of Gauteng with its fresh water, at a minimum annual cost of R150-million paid to Lesotho, just for access. The second phase will cost R11-billion.

"Water ministers Molewa and Mokonyane, as well as senior department personnel, have mentioned on numerous occasions that public-private partnerships are the only way to bridge the R300-billion funding gap.

This has been heavily opposed by groups such as the Coalition Against Water Privatization. It said that privatization policies in the 1990s led to a “dramatic increase in the price of water for the poor across South Africa”.

In Mbombela this led to an increase of up to 69% in the cost of water. In KwaZulu-Natal it led to a cholera outbreak in 2000. When communal taps were replaced by a prepaid metering system people were forced to turn to rivers for their water, the coalition said.

But municipalities have also faced the collapse of their water and sewerage works, because of a lack of funding for these. In Lekwa Teemane, outside Bloemhof in the Free State, three babies died because of water being contaminated by raw sewage.

In her budget speech this year, Mokonyane said R41-million was being taken from other parts of the water affairs budget to fix the problem.

Load-Sharing - Blackout South Africa

South Africa faces an electricity crisis, with a severe shortage of supply and sprawling blackouts due to 'load-shedding'. This ad made commentary on this problem when the blackouts began in January 2008. | Source

Worsening electricity crisis adds to South Africa’s economic woes

Here's an illuminating article by Andrew England:

Bruno Dimana sits in the dark at the menswear shop he helps manage in a usually bustling district of Johannesburg, and sighs at the latest power cut that he says keeps customers away.“It’s bad,” he says. “Nobody wants to shop in the dark.”

Mr Dimana’s shop was one of scores of businesses in the Rosebank area of the city left without lights on Monday as Eskom, the state utility, launched its latest round of load shedding — planned power cuts designed to help conserve electricity supplies.

The outages are the worst since 2008 and come as the company grapples with a power crisis partly caused by years of insufficient investment in infrastructure that is heaping more pain on South Africa’s already ailing economy.

The problems come amid mounting pressure on the rand — which hit six-year lows against the US dollar this week — and scrutiny on the government’s credit rating with Fitch, the rating agency, due to deliver the results of its review on Friday. Last week, Richard Fox, a Fitch analyst, warned that the government’s deteriorating finances were pushing the nation towards junk status.

Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s have already downgraded South Africa this year, with electricity shortages included among structural constraints.Just hours after Mr Dimana sat in the darkness waiting for customers, Tshediso Matona, Eskom’s chief executive, stood before TV cameras and apologized to the nation for the latest load-shedding.

High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article. See our Ts&Cs and peaking after five consecutive days of outages, Mr Matona blamed the cuts on “unexpected challenges” in the creaking system. These included the difficulty of securing millions of liters of diesel to run back-up gas turbines; poor coal quality and nearly two-thirds of Eskom’s installed baseload capacity being past its “mid-life”.

And after years of poor planning and under-investment — seen as a symptom of failed management at state-owned entities — there will be no quick fix for Eskom’s woes, the company admits. Instead, supply will remain severely constrained into next year and beyond.“We are living on the edge,” Mr Matona said. “Any abnormal event . . . pushes us over into load-shedding.”

High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article. See our Ts&Cs and The utility insists it is in control of the situation and has been trying to restrict load-shedding to weekends. But in addition to the outages, Eskom has this year often required energy intensive industries to cut their consumption by 10 per cent.

This hits the mining and manufacturing sectors, which together contribute about a fifth of gross domestic product in Africa’s most developed and energy intensive economy.Dennis Dykes, chief economist at Nedbank, estimates the power constraints could shave up to 0.5 per cent off growth, which is forecast to be 1.4 per cent this year — the lowest level since a 2009 recession.

“The indirect effects could be a lot more significant because of the loss from the fixed investment,” he said. “People are not going to put in additional production capacity knowing they might be faced with power cuts.”Neren Rau, chief executive of the chamber of commerce and industry (Sacci), said he was particularly worried about retailers being hit by the weekend outages — small businesses that cannot afford contingencies and tourism-dependent towns.

“We are in crisis,” Mr Rau said. “The maintenance challenges and the failures [at Eskom] we are experiencing are increasing and becoming deeper in terms of their impact.”

The problems at Eskom, which produces more than 95 per cent of South Africa’s electricity, date back years. In an effort to keep the country’s lights on, the utility has put off maintenance since before the 2010 football World Cup and has concentrated on keeping existing, rundown plants running.Eskom has generation capacity of about 43,000MW, but its plant availability is only 75 per cent — 10 per cent less than five years ago. The situation was exacerbated when a coal silo at its Majuba plant collapsed on November 1. Coal now has to be trucked from a stockyard and offloaded on to mobile conveyors, dramatically reducing the plant’s output.

At the same time, four gas turbines designed to run for three hours at peak periods are running at 14 to 15 hours to support the system. This cost Eskom R1.3bn in diesel last month, putting severe financial strain on the cash-strapped utility.

Eskom is building two multibillion dollar coal plants — Medupi and Kusile — which will add 9,600MW to the grid. But their completion has been delayed by more than two years — 12 months of which is put down to worker strikes — and they have run far over budget.The first unit of Medupi will add 800MW and is due to go on line next year. But Eskom is three to five years away from recovering its reserve margin.

“February and March are looking pretty concerning,” Mr Matona said. “Whether we load-shed because we run out of diesel [for the gas turbines] suggests the problem is bigger than Eskom’s — it’s a national problem.”

Fracking, Coal And Gold Mining-South African Water Threatened

Chris Hayward, a South African farmer, says, "If our government lets these companies touch even a drop of our water, we're ruined."

Where's the Water Gone To? What has or is happening to Water in South Africa. If the article above by England is anything to go by, prior to my posting, on this Hub, I had pointed out, albeit scantily, at some of the water draining institutions that are taking water away from the poor people. England goes for the jugular and gives some serious details.

Above I touched upon the falling Rand currency of south Africa. Andrew England gives us the heads-up below:

When South Africa was lumped with the so-called “fragile five” emerging countries last year, government officials protested loudly at what they saw as a pejorative label.

As emerging market currencies, including the rand, tumbled, South African officials deflected any sense of crisis. They argued the currency had been overvalued. And, unlike India, Brazil and Indonesia, which committed billions of dollars to prop up their currencies, South Africa ruled out an intervention.

Yet, after months peppered with bleak domestic economic news, the rand — one of the most liquid emerging markets currencies — is once again under heavy pressure, this week testing the five-year low it hit earlier this year.

In January, the rand crossed the symbolic R11 to the dollar, at one point hitting R11.395 against the greenback, the weakest since October 2008. Now, after a period of relative stability it has fallen again below the key mark, on Wednesday hitting a 7-month low of R11.194 against the dollar.

Over the past year, the rand has lost 13.1 per cent against the dollar, compared with a 9.5 per cent fall for the Brazilian real and 12.1 per cent for the Turkish lira. The Indonesian rupiah has fallen 6.3 per cent over the same period.

For some, the recent weakness is a case of déjà vu: the rand’s slide is blamed on largely the same factors as earlier this year. “Obviously there are internal reasons, but the starting point is really related to the global theme,” says Murat Toprak, a foreign exchange strategist at HSBC in London.

The rand’s weakness in 2013 and early this year was in large part blamed on the US Federal Reserve’s decision to begin tapering its “quantitative easing” program. This time, dollar strength and expectations the US will move towards monetary “normalization” — a rise in interest rates from historic lows — are seen as affecting the rand.“The reason it is performing so badly is that it is again related to one main topic — the fragile five. So the price action that we have at the moment is very similar to what we have seen last year,” says Mr Toprak.

But other analysts put more emphasis on domestic factors: Africa’s most developed economy is weighed down by anaemic growth and a huge current account deficit. Malcolm Charles, portfolio manager at Investec, says recent economic data have dented expectations of an improving trajectory.

“The dollar has been quite rampant so one would expect some general emerging market weakness. [But] if you draw down into the rand specifics, we haven’t had a lot of good news of late,” Mr Charles explains. “I’m more worried than I was a month or two ago, when we were expecting a slightly improved current account deficit and were quite confident that inflation had peaked.”

Kevin Lings, chief economist at Stanlib, a South African asset manager, traces the current bout of weakness to data this month revealing that the current account deficit had widened from 4.5 per cent of gross domestic product to 6.2 per cent of GDP. This was significantly wider than expected and illustrated that, in spite of lackluster growth, imports remained high while exports were worryingly low.

The hope had been that exports would pick up following the end of two highly damaging strikes — the first a five-month dispute in the platinum sector, the second a weeks-long stoppage by more than 200,000 metalworkers and engineers that affected thousands of companies.

The strikes pushed South Africa to the brink of a technical recession. Although growth recovered slightly in the second quarter, Mr Lings is concerned that the economy is not “rebalancing” in terms of exports and imports.

“It’s hard to make a forecast that says that the rand is going to strengthen back to fair value,” Mr Lings says. “We are going to struggle, for example, to raise interest rates significantly to draw in a lot of foreign flows because of weak growth and we are going to struggle to really unwind the current account deficit meaningfully.”The rand took another hit when interest rates were kept on hold last week, a move that surprised some foreign analysts. At the same time, Gill Marcus, the respected central bank governor, announced she would not seek to renew her term when it expired in November.That triggered some uncertainty as her successor has yet to be named. The foreign exchange market took the lack of clarity as a green light to sell. Few believe the sell-off will end any time soon.

South Africa's current account deficit widened beyond expectations

Polluting Water Table, Underwater River and Poisoning The Environ

Fracking And Wrecking The Aquifers and Water Tables/Underground Rivers

We learn from Ian Urbina that:

When a drought dried up their wells last year, hundreds of farmers and their families flocked to local fairgrounds here to pray for rain, and a call went out on the regional radio station imploring South Africans to donate bottled water.

Covering much of the roughly 800 miles between Johannesburg and Cape Town, this arid expanse — its name means “thirsty land” — sees less rain in some parts than the Mojave Desert.

Even so, Shell and several other large energy companies hope to drill thousands of natural gas wells in the region, using a new drilling technology that can require a million gallons of water or more for each well. Companies will also have to find a way to dispose of all the toxic wastewater or sludge that each well produces, since the closest landfill or industrial-waste facility that can handle the waste is hundreds of miles away.

“Around here, the rain comes on legs,” said Chris Hayward, 51, a brawny, dust-covered farmer in Beaufort West, quoting a Karoo saying about how rare and fleeting precipitation is in the area.

With his three skinny border collies crouching dutifully at his side, Mr. Hayward explained that he had to slaughter more than 600 of his 2,000 sheep last year because there was not enough water to go around.

“If our government lets these companies touch even a drop of our water,” he said, “we’re ruined.”

South Africa is among the growing number of countries that want to unlock previously inaccessible natural gas reserves trapped in shale deep underground. The drilling technology — hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” for short — holds the promise of generating new revenue through taxes on the gas, creating thousands of jobs for one of the country’s poorest regions, and fueling power plants to provide electricity to roughly 10 million South Africans who live without it.

But many of the sites here and on other continents that are being considered for drilling by oil and gas companies and by governments short of cash are in fragile areas where local officials have limited resources, political leverage or experience to ensure that the drilling is done safely.

A Surge in Interest

The interest from big energy companies in South Africa and elsewhere means that shale gas may redraw the global energy map, according to many energy experts.

Michael Klare, a professor of world security studies at Hampshire College, said that the new sources of natural gas from shale may lessen the geopolitical importance of countries that historically have been the biggest producers of natural gas, including Iran, Qatar and Russia. The new drilling, which draws strong support from the United States government, represents a boon for American companies like Halliburton, Chesapeake Energy and Exxon Mobil that have greater experience with shale gas, and therefore are likely to win many lucrative contracts abroad.

More than 30 countries, including China, India and Pakistan, are now considering fracking for natural gas or oil, and the surge in gas production has spurred interest in building pipelines and terminals that liquefy the fuel so it can be shipped to far-flung markets. In the United States, shale gas has increased supply, driving prices down and benefiting industrial plants that use the gas for manufacturing and consumers who depend on it for electricity, heating or cooking.

But the enthusiasm abroad, especially in less-developed regions, does carry risks, according to many energy experts.

“The big problem is that all the excitement around shale gas, most of it fostered by the U.S., has also led some countries, especially in the developing world, to take a drill-first, figure-out-regulations-later attitude,” said Professor Klare, who has written extensively about the way that energy policies affect global security. “There is simply too much being taken on faith when it comes to company reassurances about the safety and costs of this drilling.”

The Indonesian government, for example, is considering allowing drilling for shale gas in a part of Java where, in 2006, drilling led to the eruption of a mud volcano that killed at least 13 people, and displaced more than 30,000 residents from 12 villages, according to a team of international scientists. Indonesia is a major exporter of liquefied natural gas, but it struggles to meet domestic demand, and supporters of the shale drilling project say it will help solve that problem.

Shale gas in Poland may represent more than a third of the natural gas resources in Europe, according to energy experts, and could help the country reduce its dependence on Russia, which now supplies about 60 percent of Poland’s gas.

But an April 2010 report by Bernstein Research, a market research group, raised concerns about the costs and risks of shale gas drilling because Poland is so densely populated, dependent on agriculture and farmers will have to compete with drillers for water.

“Europe and some of the countries with shale potential have significantly less renewable water resources than the US,” the report warned.

A U.S. Initiative

In the United States, where the water-intensive drilling technique of fracking was invented, the government is taking a lead role in supporting the dissemination of the technology abroad, as well as promoting other energy projects, including building infrastructure to extract and transport liquid natural gas.

Over the past three years, President Obama has promoted shale gas during visits to China, India and Poland.

“We believe that there is the capacity technologically to extract that gas in a way that is entirely safe,” Mr. Obama said in a speech in May in Warsaw, where the American Embassy co-hosted an international shale gas conference.

The Export-Import Bank of the United States has financed some of its biggest gas projects over the last several years, including the largest transaction in the bank’s history — $3 billion approved in 2009 for hundreds of miles of gas pipeline and a liquid natural gas plant and terminal project led by Exxon Mobil in Papua New Guinea.

The United States Geological Survey has offered training and technology to geologists exploring shale gas in Europe.

In 2009, the United States and China signed an agreement to promote accelerated development of shale gas in China, which has major shale gas deposits in Inner Mongolia in the North and in the country’s restive western frontier, Xinjiang, which is characterized by severe droughts and a separatist movement.

The State Department’s Global Shale Gas Initiative, begun in 2010, has been advising many foreign countries on fracking. It has organized a half-dozen trips this year for foreign officials to meet with American energy experts and to visit drilling sites in the United States.

The Web site for the initiative says that its primary goals are “to achieve greater energy security, meet environmental objectives and further US economic and commercial interests.”

Concern About Effects

Some economists and environmentalists say that while the governments of poorer countries may benefit from the new tax revenues and jobs, they may not be paying enough attention to the environmental risks of drilling. They also note that local residents — who bear the brunt of the air pollution, potential water contamination from spills or underground seepage, and truck traffic that come with drilling — may see few benefits.

“These projects have already started causing steep inflation in costs of local housing and services, and except for the lucky few who get temporary construction jobs, the economic conditions for local communities can actually get worse,” said Doug Norlen, policy director of Pacific Environment, an advocacy and research organization that tracks federal and corporate financing of energy projects abroad.

The direct benefits of new drilling to American landowners — they receive bonuses and royalties when they lease their land to drillers — will generally not be shared by landowners abroad. In South Africa and many other countries looking to embrace the drilling, the minerals under a property are more often owned by governments, not individuals.

Mr. Norlen added that the influx of foreign construction workers in these projects could lead to conflicts with local and tribal communities. In one example, he noted, the United States government-financed project in Papua New Guinea to extract and transport liquid natural gas recently led to violent clashes between residents and foreign contractors.

But Jan Willem Eggink, general manager for Shell in South Africa, said that the Karoo project could eventually produce millions of dollars in direct investment and thousands of jobs for South Africans, which would help lower the nation’s unemployment rate of about 25 percent.

“There is a huge energy problem looming for South Africa,” he added, explaining that energy demand is growing rapidly and that shale gas coupled with renewables could help meet that new demand while also lowering the nation’s dependence on Mozambique for gas.

Fracking involves injecting large amounts of water mixed with chemicals and sand at very high pressure deep underground to crack rock and release gas. After fracking, much of the water at each well returns to the surface mixed with toxic chemicals.

Shell’s plan is to drill at least six exploratory wells over the next three years, and if the gas reserves appear profitable, it will start production with at least 1,500 wells several years later. Martin Bell, the water manager for Shell’s Karoo project, said the company planned to recycle as much wastewater as possible, storing it temporarily in closed containers. Trucks will not be the primary method for moving waste or water, he said. Drilling waste, which could be especially toxic because the area is high in uranium deposits, will be shipped to disposal plants by pipes or by rail, Mr. Bell said.

Water needed for fracking may be brought in by rail from the coast, which is hundreds of miles away in some parts, or drawn from aquifers far below the ones that supply water for farmers. The company will tap into the aquifers that farmers use only if it can prove no adverse impact, Mr. Bell said.

In interviews, South African drilling regulators emphasized that producing and using more natural gas would help the country’s air pollution problems and avoid increasing its already heavy dependence on coal for electricity, since coal is dirtier than natural gas when burned.

But in this sun-flooded hinterland, where sheep outnumber humans and rusty windmills pumping water dot the horizon, many residents say they would prefer to see the government bring in wind or solar farms, not new drilling.

“It just takes one big spill, leaky pipe or crack underground that their studies didn’t catch, and a farm my family has run for four generations is done,” said Trenly Spence, 44, as he dug up a clogged irrigation pipe that carries water across his 3,300 acres to where his 3,000 sheep and goats graze.

Mr. Spence added that farmers had been frustrated by the lack of information from Shell officials about the chemicals they would inject into the ground during fracking.

Shell officials said that they would disclose what they could about fracking formulas if they started drilling, but that they might be limited by trade secrets of their subcontractors.

In the United States, some drilling companies have been reluctant to reveal the chemicals they use in fracking, saying the information is proprietary.

Officials from the State Department’s shale gas initiative have said that developing countries interested in fracking will need to create stronger protections for intellectual property rights so energy companies will think that they can safely maintain certain patents over their drilling techniques. Some environmentalists say that strengthening these intellectual property protections will only help energy companies argue that they do not have to disclose the chemicals they use in fracking abroad.

A spokesman for the State Department declined to answer questions about fracking and intellectual property rights. But he emphasized that the initiative’s goal is to help countries make informed decisions about their resources, rather than promoting shale gas abroad.

“The regulatory and financial climate is obviously important to companies considering an investment in unconventional gas,” the spokesman said in an e-mail. “But sound environmental regulations and policies are also critical, as is working with local communities and other stakeholders to understand the impact of shale gas on their lives.”

The Future

Some legal experts say that the United States needs to be more concerned about environmental and other impacts as it promotes energy technology abroad. David Hunter, director of the Program on International and Comparative Environmental Law at American University, said, “Especially with energy projects, the US and its funding institutions have a habit of promoting policies that foster a stable climate for foreign investors but that are not in the best interests of local populations.”

In Peru, for example, the United States Export-Import bank provided more than $400 million in loan guarantees in 2008 for a liquefied natural gas terminal to export gas from the Camisea gas fields, which are in the Amazon rainforest. The project for drilling and pipelines in the Camisea, which received separate financing from the Inter-American Development Bank, has been dogged by spills, accusations that company officials bribed lawmakers and criticisms about exporting the gas rather than using more of it to lower prices for domestic consumers.

Energy companies are using fracking technology in parts of Canada, bringing jobs and wealth to gas-rich provinces like Alberta and British Columbia. But residents near drilling sites have complained that natural gas has seeped into their water wells making their tap water flammable. Drillers have denied responsibility.

In South Africa, pressure is mounting to proceed cautiously.

After public concerns were raised this year about drilling in the Karoo region, South African drilling officials set a moratorium on new licenses for exploration until February so the government could conduct more research.

In July, the Advertising Standards Authority of South Africa, an independent agency that sets guidelines for media companies, ruled that several of Shell’s advertised claims — including one that said fracking had never led to groundwater contamination — were misleading or unsubstantiated and should be withdrawn. Shell said the advertisements were an accurate reflection of its opinion.

“The government is under a great deal of pressure to hurry up,” said Hein Rust, director of disaster management for the central Karoo region. “But I don’t think these decisions should be made on faith or until all the costs are known.”

Things Not Changed, and Did Not So's To Stay The Same..

Ramshackle Hovel Where Miniers Live-Cyril Ramaphosa is one of he Shareholders on some mine some of these miners on strike in.

The crisis in South Africa is manifold. One can see the breakdown within the Local governments has become an arena of contentions with huge poverty issues, inherited by the poor, fromApartheid's efforts with its racially infected capitalist society, with its draconian Laws, in the process impoverishing the African poor masses.

This cannot be understand merely as Neoliberalism, or as class manifestations of global economic forces, and is the main frame of ideas informing our real-politic today in Mzantsi, but, in the final analysis, this approach and perspective has proven to be inadequate for any level of analysis. One of the things to consider is how to begin to forge and form a nation of South Africa, today. The struggle that was happening was that the Multicores were pining to be included into the global market, and shed of the constraints of Ant-Apartheid which brought down Apartheid, and disturbed their profit margins.

"

As such, it encompasses but extends beyond the extremely conservative package of neoliberal macro-economic policies set in place in 1996.

The most compelling analysis of changing relations between corporate capital, the global economy and the South African State highlights what Ben Fine and others call the minerals energy complex that has shaped capitalist accumulation in South Africa since the minerals discoveries in the second half of the nineteenth century, and that remains in force today.

From all these going-ons, Gilliard observer that:

"This analysis, as we shall see, directs attention to the heavily concentrated character of South African corporate capital; the highly advantageous terms on which these conglomerates engineered their re-engagement with the global economy after the fall of apartheid through their relations with strategically placed forces in the ANC; how the conglomerates have restructured and denationalized their operations; massive and escalating capital flight; the formation of a small but powerful black capitalist class allied with white corporate capital; understandings of the ‘economy’ fostered through these alliances; their ongoing influence over ANC government policy; and multiple ways these forces continue to play into and intensify brutal inequalities and the degradation of livelihoods of a large proportion of the black South African population."

One other interesting nugget I picked up from Gilliard was when he wrote:

"A second key dimension of official post-apartheid re-nationalisation is found in the ANC government’s immigration policies and practices.

The Aliens Control Act was repealed in 2002, but the bounding of the nation through immigration policy and practices — as well as popular vigilantism, abuses by police and brutal detention of ‘aliens’ — have ramped up and fed into xenophobia.

Third, the most important elements of post-apartheid nationalism are embodied in the keywords of the ANC Alliance: the ‘national question’ and the National Democratic Revolution (NDR)."

I have already noted elsewhere that the ANC rule today, is a continuation of Apartheid, but this time for the benefit of the ANC rulers. So far, 20+ years of their rule, the ANC has become even more bolder, arrogant and very much full of a "Laager Mindset" of its 'groomed' and middle-aged/old stalwarts' membership-with the hordes of followers as an 'after-thought'. But as they continue to plunder the public coffers, the ANC's hegemony is teetering. They have lost much moral authority and any sense of nationalism because of the corruption and herd-mentality with which they run their crew.

There is a brewing discontent amongst its voting and general polity. There are all kinds of criticism that the ANC has been implementing ideas of censorship-they are even working on censoring the Internet-How they will do that, I still will want to see myself. The masses are really restless and uneasy with all the issues, about water and electricity, raising gas prices, joblessness, poverty, expensive electric and water charges, failing clinics and schools, demoralized and battered families and sorties, general sickness, crime, death and flaunted corruption of all kinds, by the present ruling ANC and their sidekicks

This is how Gramsci saw national unification:

Passive revolution refers not just to a top-down seizure of power by the bourgeoisie in the face of challenges from below. Rather, it involves the overthrow of some older social forms and the institution of new ones, combined with a deliberate and structural pacification of subaltern classes — it combines, in other words, both a ‘progressive’ or ‘modernizing’ revolution of sorts, and its passive deformation."(Gramsci)

For Gramsci, passive revolution was not an abstract model that can simply be applied or against which specific ‘cases’ can be measured. The challenge, both analytical and political, is to rework — or as Gramsci might have said ‘translate’ — it in relation to the forces thrown up by a different set of circumstances.

The ANC has clearly betrayed the premise that 'when they took over power," there were going to go ahead and implement a fundamental redistribution of political and economic power. Saul and Gelb "Focused on how South African corporate capital wrung concessions out of the ANC in the early 1990s, as well as shaping understandings of the economy, and defining the terms of their re-engagement with the global economy — an account that is broadly in accordance with that of a number of other analysts.

Corporate capital, has been too successful, winning so many concessions and giving up so little in terms of supporting reforms to benefit the majority that the reform program is inherently unstable. And they were able to do this with the passive consent of the people. The ANC decided to forgo hegemony and concentrated on 'domination'. The ANC came up with the spin that there were using their newly adopted ruling technique were trying to marshall the poor people into one and possibly avoiding the pending conflagration. But the ANC obfuscates the fact that there were local energies, organizations or people's popular struggles that were at the forefront in shaping the terms of the political settlement and attempted to bring about key new social arrangements.

All this has been omitted in the history books that our children and people should be reading about. The fact that their water has been outsourced along with their electricity; that our education is a very poor copy of American failed system of education which was designed to miseducated African Americans(in so many ways- Things like "Outcome-Based Educaton"?! What's that?)

Then of course there's the frustration of having to deal with the summer heat lacking water, and no electricity, in the summer, rotting food and making people even more desperate. No water, no food, but the lives of the Rich and powerful in our African elite display their opulence and lavish grand-life-styles in all forms of outlets and social gatherings, so's to be gawked-at by the poor.

In this Hub, I think that we ought to face the fact that the ANC has failed us as a people. We need to acknowledge that, maybe we might start thinking differently about this matter. This is not really the whole story of what is taking place in South. For instance, we have a Drug pandemic that is wiping out families, societies a culture and its whole peoples. We have a high percentage of illiteracy, and are being left behind as a people as the world is going fully digital and splurging throughout the Internet; there's a lot of instability, frustration, disorder, chaos, disfunction, crime, hunger, ingnorance, and stagnancy that is so malignant, like a cancer, it is devouring large chunks of what's left of our Ubuntu/Botho.

What Does Mzantsi Mean To You?

Whither Mzantsi! What Now And Where To, Azania

I have long held on to these thoughts, or talks I am about to engage that I think I can throw in a bit of what's on my mind when it comes to this topic. The topic is"

The Total And Definitive Destruction Of South Africa As We Know It

Long Topic, a bit generalized, but this encompasses too many things that I will not be able to cover all here on this Hub. It will also need some fore digging and definite and well-researched material to be brought to bear, that I will simply skim through it. It is true, I have said above the end of South Africa as we know it, because, up to till '92, we knew it well. We knew we were under Apartheid, and were oppressed, and killed in the process. That was very clear to us… We knew who we were dealing with, and we took various steps, over time, to correct this injustice, at a very high cost indeed.

When we were Apartheidized in 1948, we had just come from under the British rule of divided segregation, ''of a British type", but nonetheless it was worse for wear, too. It might not have been called Apartheid under the Boers, but it was divided and conquered rule over Africans, who labor was exploited, and made ignorant over the centuries. To get a much more deeper sense of what I am talking about, check out my Hub Of the Students Revolution of June 1976, already published here on HubPages. This tome traces the history of miseducation and underdevelopment of Africans and their ability to learn or have good and well designed education. That was under the British.

But under the Boers,things changed completely. You can read up on the Laws of Apartheid in my now published Hub called Soweto: So Where To… Wherein one gets to read up on the bevy of Apartheid Laws, and how these were constructed. It has been a journey where we have never been on our won, nor ruled ourselves-from the time of Jan Van Riebeeck, when this autonomy was extinguished amongst the various nations here in South Africa. From then to the fake-end of Apartheid with the coming of the ANC from Exile, we have never ruled ourselves, freely and authentically autonomously at any other time…

The June 16th Revolution by the Students in Soweto, began the cascading of events and history. The slide was so steep that it rolled Apartheid from its firm moorings, but it managed to subduct and morph into an entity that is practically controlling everything in Mzantsi, but this time without the draconian Laws, and overt oppression. In this round up of history, we get to see the ANC entering the 'ruling scene' in south Africa, but under the control of the Past Power elders inside South Africa(groups like the millionaires called the Johanesburgers, and so forth), mining magnates and other local big businessmen, who were working in cahoots with International, Imperial and all sorts of monied and military backed powers of the West.

So that, in sum, when 1992 came around, we are in the Talks About The Talks; then there was Codessa, and finally the product therefrom was the so-called Rainbow Nation. The leaders of this Rainbow Nation came in riding high on the Gravy Train. What that mean is what I am about to try to put together in a brief below.

The year I am writing about these events is toward the middle of 2015… now a year half-way worn, and Mzantsi is in a serious crisis. The litany of things that have happened since those days of 1992, to now, 20+ years in our touted Democracy, show anyone reading this pice that South African Africans are is very serious trouble, and this time, it seems like all is lost.

GENOCIDE:

What am I talking about? For instance, if ever there was a time when we knew our schtick, this is a time where uncertainty reigns, and genocide looms. The death of local culture, and the rise of foreign cultures in our country is one place to look. The change from Bantu Education to the present-day education of confusion-C Model Education, is just that-education designed to counter African people, their culture, and everything about themselves.

In the short span of 20+ years, our people's education core has gone from 50% to zero sum. What I am saying is that we have a much more ignorant populace and reading is not an option, nor does it exist. Education in the ghettoes is something one cannot say much about. We have our people fighting and Toyi-toying to have their children accepted in the White Schools, Colored Schools, but our own in the Townships.

Within the African societies, anomie reigns supreme-normlessnenss is the present normal. Sex and money rules the people. Money comes first, and the rest, if ever, comes later. Having had our culture displaced, we are now pandering to the ways and mores of Imperial culture, strung up on Pornography, watching outdated Soaps; repetitious re-runs on some American-styled DSTV; Our Station, music program and selections, Festivals controlled tightly by Clear Channel; Our Supermarkets in our Townships controlled by mega-Super sInvestors, owned by White Capital, with black faces on the counters(akin to the days of petty-apartheidWindow-dressing the farce), but this time these front counter Africans have titles like managers, "CEO's", "COOs", "Skhulu", "Nkokheli", "Ngangara", "Tower", "Boss", "Baas"!.

Meanwhile rape and prostitution can be seen showcased on local Newspapers front pages-call girls standing in certain areas in Downtown Johannesburg selling the wares; you see people shown behaving indecently, and onlookers carrying and taking photos and carrying on-plucked on the front-pages of the local gossip newspapaers; the abuse of women and children very intense and many die because of that life-style.

There's rampant alcoholism and devastating drug abuse amongst the poor and the monied African Tycoons; some designer drugs have wormed their way into the core of our African Societies and enclaves; Many Poor White people are seriously affected too by prostitution, drugs and alcoholism; drugs akin to American 'Crack-Cocaine' pandemic, are decimating populations and large communites/youth and the elderly, to very young Kids, but here in Mzantsi it goes with names like 'Whoonga' and 'Nyaope,' etc. Drug addiction and alcoholism are dealing us a death blow and we have not yet even begun to recover.

The social fabric has been seriously eroded, damaged and close to being wiped-out. During Apartheid, at least we knew we had to read, no matter what kind of useless material, but we read. Now, books are expensive, money is a problem, many do not have it-food is very expensive, and it has now become making choices of eithr buying breead, cabbage and some little food, or buying a book(s); what we are facing is a dog-eats-dog-rat-race-world here in Mzantsi.

Our culture and language has been flaunted, gutted, and abused and does not have anything to do with us nor relevant to us. Words like "Ubuntu," and many other such callous shenanigans used on our languages by foreigners, have robbed us our cultural existence and reality; and we have allowed that to happen, thus the dysfunction and confusion we are suffering from today, which is steadily wiping us out as the indegenous of Azania/Mzantsi.

Mzantsi Truth

Straight Talk Makes No French And Chips

What is Mzantsi to you? Whatever anyone will say, I'm going to have to look at some unpleasant things that we are doing to ourselves, and this tim, apartheid not at the helm, but behind the scenes, but the 'front-desk' nominated Africans are the ones who are wielding power today. What am I talking about?

Well, the replacing of White faces and other non-European faces with African has in fact worsened the situation since 1994. When CODESA was through with its ambiguous adoption of certain plans and ideas, our people here in Mzantsi were euphoric; some even thought that they are going to be living in the houses of their former masters; by then education had been trashed from Bantu Education to Education in Limbo, and at one time teachers were SADF members of the White Apartheid Army. The lull in any coherent form of education, saw the ANC come into power installing novices to run a country, take on a bartered African people and their wasted institution, and confused things more.

The Exile And Inzile Affects

The ANC has this unspoken but known policy that they cater for their members, who to, depending on which Cabal they fall under, will get or not have any position or work accordingly. This has given many in the ANC privileged rights and entitlement to the allocation of jobs and the like to the nation. No.. They did not cater for the Nation, but ANC Members. Some, very ill-suited for many positions, get them because they had been groomed by the ANC, and they are expected to do the ANC Bidding.

Those who had gone into exile were accommodated in many various ways that in the end have become unfair to the lives/areas of the poor who were left inside the country, and these, are at the bottom of the food-chain. Now, the new and instant/'kits" millionaires of Mzantsi, Africans, mostly, have organized themselves according to "Tribes," Africanists, ANC Populists(Or What?), those from Exile, who get a better share and deal from the present government, and those that never left the country and fought Apartheid inside the country, these are not really getting by very much. Many are ignored and forgotten, and live in desperate poverty and are employed, sick, and very discouraged.

When I say that dog-eats-dog world that we now live in and find ourselves enmeshed-in, I literally mean the constant abuse of women. It should be noted that Position/Power and Money equals that person having a very wide berth and choice especially men, to have harems and multiple affairs, cars, expensive clothes, trips overseas, taking out women to all sorts of sexual escapades and binging in expensive liquor and drugs.

Yes, apartheid has turned our lives topsy-turvy, the present-day government has brought us to the brink of extinction. I have written a Hub titled from Apartheid to Barbarism, because, our actions, as an African people of South Africa, is one of under developing ourselves backward.

What's happening? Why are we in the situation that we are in? What am I talking about? It is time we started "Talking Sharp" with one another. Looking at our situation realistically and tabulating what we are not doing, in particular, and how we are affecting one another, specifically is what we have to begin to do.

Thabo Mbeki: "To be truly honest… I never anticipated that the country was going to retreat into the satanic hellhole it has now become… If I only had the foresight to see what was coming, but I suppose it's too late now to cry over spilt milk!

Truth Hurts; Knowledge Liberates

Anonymous said...

"I certainly see the power carried by true knowledge. True knowledge liberates and can be constructive but false knowledge is a destructive weapon that has been used to build and destroy empires around the world. Examples of such are those or recent eras cited by the former president Thabo Mbeki in his extract. South African politics are reliant on the knowledge of the past and since we going to have born free voters voting recently, the manipulation of the knowledge of the past can play a vital role in future politics. I believe that the truth is more powerful than a lie.

That is why I plead upon those who carry the true knowledge to be courageous and share and liberate the masses. I believe that Thabo Mbeki has more to give to this nation and Africa at large. We need true knowledge that will explain why is that Africa is rich in land, minerals and resources yet Africa is the poorest and is depopularized by conflicts. Who funds the rebels?

Why our minerals don't feed us? It is only uncensored knowledge of the truth that will liberate us africans. We need courageous leaders to take us forward and fight for true knowledge. I'd rather die seeking the truth than to live a lie. I encourage the likes of Thabo Mbeki and Robert Mugabe to assemble an army of truth and fight for the truth."

When I was growing up in Mzantsi, culture was part of my education. I learnt this from own family and extended family We were taught the 'do's' and 'don'ts' of living and dealing with others. The primary lesson was 'Hlompho'/'Inhlonipho'(Respect), long before we can even talk about Ubuntu/Botho(The Act of Being Human). They were roles and things expected of us as children, and we knew what to expect from our elders, at all levels. This was the modicum of cultural effect and behavior I grew up with and then some.

But as teenagers, most of us cut our teeth in the politics of Sofasonke Mpanza, and we knew what the struggle was about by participating in marches and meetings of "Amadod' Umzi"(Men of the House). By the time we were in our teens, were exposed to the ideas of Black(African) Consciousness by Bantu Biko, but many of us never joined any movement, per se, but we knew what most of these organizations were about.

This led us to the June 1976 Student Revolution, where most of my generation came of Age: We made it possible for the ANC to come back from exile and rule South Africa. It has been 20+ years now, and there's left a bitter taste in our mouths. Disappointment and disgust is what can conjurer what to say about the past two decades.

What's Happenin' Or Not Happenin'?

Ever since the ANC took power, there has been a lot of different message that have been visited upon the poor of South Africa. First the people thought Freedom meant laissez faire in wealth, housing and good life and good times. It meant being bosses of the Whites, and returning the favor of all the 48 years of Apartheid. People had such high expectation, intoxicatingly euphoric, and believing in all types of delusions of grandeur.

Our own elected government, we dreamed and were now seeing and believing, is going to take care of us, Africans, now. Free health, education, housing, no more hunger, our old lands given back to us; our court systems, we hoped, will dispense justice; since we will be owning our banks, our savings and monies will be safe and accruing. Yes, Apartheid was now gone, and the ANC is going to deliver on its promises from exile, and now that they were in poor, we believed and knew that we were "Free At Last!"

Fast-Forward to today, all the things I mentioned were the people's hopes and expectation have never been fulfilled. Everything was just jabberwocky-Cheap talk to get us to put the ANC in Power, and once we did, Choo-choo! Here came the Gravy train-and we have been watching people on it ride it for as long as the past 20+ years-going nowhere-Fast! Progress has been two steps forward, and ten steps back. The Freedom Charter was thrown out, and now one finds sit on the Walls of Downtown pasted as Mural which no one really reads no care for because it has never been implemented or applied.

There have been strikes, fights, killings of groups and individual dissenters to ANC rule and corruption. The ANC is so corrupt, that whatever wrong they were doing, they feel some serious sense of "Entitlement". To be now in power so long. The even said, in these past elections, "It Is Cold Outside The ANC."

And they meant it, and the people over these two decades, and come to know experience and realize/see this truism applied fully against them. We got to understand when Sisulu's daughter was deriding the people complaining about lack of service delivery and decent housing, and poo-pooed them away and shushing the Poor Africans to stop complaining, and should pull themselves by their bootstraps, since it was now every man/woman for themselves.

Tis has really come to pass-and we are witnessing what this meant for us the people of Mzantsi. Murders by criminals and political operatives burgeoned; nepotism, cronyism, favoritism, "Tribalism," Cabals and the cult of leadership have become our staple. Intimidation and political killings have been steadily keeping apace with other deaths in the land. Killers for higher are fattening their wallets with some killing duties; communities are not served properly; education is dead in the Townships and rural areas(Some) for all intense and purposes. Health delivery is poor and very rickety-inept at best. Nurses are badly trained , and government hirelings are just having a ball not working and receiving both bribes and pay from the poor and the government, in that order.

Those officials caught for corruption are simply shifted to other governmental institutions and never fired. Billion have been stolen and are still being wasted on all these inappropriate actions by the government and it groomed hirelings and sidekicks(a very dangerous clique, by the way, the lower echelon members and ANC operatives). Any opposition by anyone is crumpled up like liter and thrown out of the discourse or neither given attention-the arrogance and mien displayed by the ANC and its followers is palpalable-deep and very cheeky, so to speak.

There are several Hubs I have written about the ANC in other things that they doing or not doing, but in this one, I am also chastising our own people. We, Africans Of Mzantsi, have lost our minds too. We are suffering from what I call "Colonial Hangovers" (Setlamama/Babalazi) in how we are carrying on.

There are to many things that are happening and all of them affect us to be like we are all in an asylum as a nation of African people. As we shall see, Fanon addresses this effort of trying to cure Africans from Colonial Mental disorders is something that the ANC side-stepped, and instead, went for the public coffers and looted hem dry, up to his day.

I will not go over the litany of what the ANC has done or not done in the past 20+ years of its rule, I have done that sufficiently in various Hubs I have already published here on HubPages, and the reader ca go and read them. What I want to talk about is what happened just these past few months, weeks and days just to give the reader of what I am really talking about when I tell our own African poor people that we are too responsible for what we are doing to ourselves, and this makes other people look down upon us, and "Disrespect" us… In not so many words, we are our own worst enemies, we Africans Of Mzantsi.

South Africa's new drug cocktail of choice is devastating its townships

Nine-year-old Tumelo shows off antiretroviral pills before taking his medication at Nkosi's Haven, south of Johannesburg. Such anti-AIDS drugs are used as part of the cheap, illegal cocktail known as "nyaope." | Source

"Nobody Wants To Fight, Because Nobody Knows What to say." - Gil Scott-Heron

In our midst here in Mzantsi, everyone knows everything, but most people do not know anything at all. This confusion is sown amongst our people because they have left themselves exposed,by looking askance at the opportunity we were now having: To read. People stopped reading and collecting information South African TV with is Dallas re-runs and Sanford and Son Sit coms, and many cowboy movies created a paradigm shift. We envisioned ourselves, as a free people, living life as seen on TV and so forth.

The coming of the ANC excelerated this belief and view, and this was enabled by the bungling and inexperienced ANC government that tried to run South Africa like they used to run chicken farms in the little confined camps in Morogoro and Marimba and so forth. Today they are using the Apartheid Jails to carry out what they started doing in Quatro(Number Four-like the one run by the Boers in South Africa), but the present jails are seeing less of the murderous brutality the ANC engendered in their Prisons in exile, but have kept intact Apartheid prison and then some.

In the pretext of working and changing the past Apartheid laws, what the ANC did was to adopt the same institution of parliamentary modus operandi, working on was from green papers to white papers as the Boers did, and behave like little "Black" Englishmen, in a country they are ruling in Africa. Just like the Kenyans judges still wear White Wigs, in Africa, showing the serious vestiges and remnants of colonial rule that still dictates to our lives in these myriad of ways.

Mzantsi Drugged And Burning

The country is experiencing fires of all kinds, vandalism and maybe the early stages of revolt, this is still not quite clear. But if one were to observe this phenomenon, caused by mostly rebellion against lack of proper and adequate service deliver, we end up with fires. A clinic in Brakeman and outlying Locations was due to the fact that people of that area in Brakpan were using electricity that they were connected to from the clinic, and when the security tried to stop them, they burned down the clinic. Children in the Limpopo region are being held hostage by their parents who have burned some of their schools, and are demanding to be incorporated into other another municipality, for the one they were in was useless.

Some communities have burned clinics, libraries and schools because they were demanding that a road should be built, or the same complain about lack of service delivery, no jobs, corruption and so on. In places like Malamulele, the residents are demanding that they be incorporated to another province or municipality for the one they belong to, is neglected, poor, too corrupt and nothing good is taking place on behalf of the denizens. The main community outcry here is Poor or lack of proper and good/consistent deliver, and the authorities cannot solve the problem.

Then there's this recent case of a security person who was arrested after it was discovered the that he had Safe in the Wall, or hidden value wherein they found that he had millions of Rands and pills he sold to school children inside. Thieves came and stole his loot, and the police found out about his operation. The thieves are believed to have sold their stolen pills to some dealers and all this is done for the sake of money.

Leo Hornak Writes:

"In South Africa’s poorest townships, a new and highly addictive street drug is gaining in popularity. But "Nyaope" isn’t a clearly defined illegal substance: it is more of a cocktail of various other substances, and one that can be deadly.

And according to Maseko, the impact of these mixes can be devastating. “It’s quite shocking when you walk anywhere in a lot of townships. You instantly know when someone is using this drug," she says. Users appear sedated, with slurred speech and distinctive burns on their fingers and lips from holding small Nyaope cigarettes.

Maseko visited addicts in one township in South Africa's Mpumalanga, and says they're united by one thing, despite the various kinds of highs on offer: “It looks like they are sleepwalking."

One reason for the new popularity of Nyaope is its cheapness: It's estimated a single dose costs around $2. Yet some addicts are still turning to robberies and carjackings to fund their habit, Maseko says.

To help users and their families, an informal network of unregistered treatment centers has sprung up in some of the worst-affected communities. But whether they are capable of offering effective treatment remains to be seen, Maseko says: “At the moment it does not look optimistic at all. More and more young people are getting addicted to the drug."

In The Vaal, trucks that were carrying scrap metal, has been hi-jacked by some youth, who climb on top of these trucks and drop the scrap on the toad, where others are waiting on the sides of the road to pick it up and sell it to a clique of well dressed, married and working business men, who are raking-in millions; Cp[per Cable wires are stolen on the Highways, rail racks and the streets to be sold for scrap. Many are said to make thousands of Rands a day with these operations.

In Bushbuckridge people were told not to build on a certain piece of land-but they nonetheless went ahead and built their houses, mansions, now they have no water and electricity, and the government is moving in to bulldoze these houses. This has been happening in various areas throughout Soweto and the Outlying Townships, where people had build their mansions, and government moves in and evicts them from the land and repossesses the land.

The Township of Soweto and those in the East and West Rand, all over the country, are ravaged by the Drug called "Nyaope and Whoonga," and many others that are not even known, but heavily used by the poor. Crime has risen, car-jacking is up; murders and rapes abnormal, Xenophobia and other phobias are rampant; alcoholism and spousal abuses and divorces are hitting the roof and growing higher by the day; Aids is decimating they youth and elderly; TB is prevalent in the 21st century; dysentry and diarrhea ravaging its victims; poverty and joblessness add-up to the social miasma and chaos.

The police top-brass is involved in trading illegal cigarettes over the borders and highways. A guy known as Masonjane was onto the trail of this illicit trade and when he was about to crack the case, he was gunned down by the drug crews; his car and body was found in the veld, and he was dead for trying to help solve the crime and drug spree.

Anomie and low-down social more and moral are zero, and nonexistent within the poor people's communities; it is well-known that many parents allow their parents to bring or be in-love with men who buy them cars, phones, clothes, houses and the like, take care of the girl's family and parents, and usually, whenever the girl dies or something dreadful happened to the girl, they loose everything, and this has been going on up to the writing of this piece-it is a rife thing, where many say those from Africa North, marry African South African Women so's to qualify for citizenship, and then dump them or kill or both.

Sporting activity is absent and very little in the huge Township of SOWETO. Children are now caught up with playing Computer and other types of games and rarely go outside to play; many sporting facilities lie in ruins-unused, and what used to be the norm, where, when I was growing up, there was Track and Field, Swimming, Tennis, Boxing, Ballroom Dancing, Music lesson in Dorkay House and DOCC in Orlando, Weightlifting, Beauty Contests, Tournaments of all Sports and so forth.

Today in our Townships there's no more activities; people are more into imbibing large amounts of alcohol, spirits and using other illicit drugs; many young girls are having babies so's to qualify for government grants and aid. Sex and Money, Prostitution and Cheating, both men who are married as well as those men and women who are unmarried-there's a total breakdown in the social and family structures we knew as we grew up, my generation, as we saw it, and were part of it.

We have to begin to take responsibility of ourselves as individuals, first, then our families, extended families, community and nation. We cannot wish to anything that we as individuals cannot even achieve for ourselves. We cannot hope to survive based on short-cuts and hand outs as a people.We are going to have to critic and self-critic ourselves and begin to move our understanding of our culture, etc., along with the changes we desire.

One has to begin the change within oneself, first, and then, in the process affect and encourage others to develop their selves, and in that way, a community of citizens with accountability to themselves and their communities will emerge. A Nation is built and cobbled from unified communities with accountable to one another, and then we can build the trust needed/required in order to work together as communities in bringing forth a nation.

One cannot fight any war of fight without knowing anything. Our pretending that we know it all, and are averse of reading, is a contradiction. That means we are operating from 'ignorance. That will not pass the smell test in any endeavor we might like to take on in life. 'Truth Hurts and knowledge liberates', is one of the heading I have used. This remains true as I am onto this Hub.

That Is Why We Are Seen In A negative Light - This Affects Us Greatly Today...

In the Hub above, I have alluded to the fact that the present-day ANC government did not take proper care to administer Psychiatric counseling to its Apartheid-Traumatized people, who had endured it for the past 48 years till the ANC came into power. Many of us here on blogs and social media, was whatever, but in the long run, no one deals with the necessary and desperately need program that the present government had to pour-in billions in creating conditions, institution and care-givers that would take-up on the task of healing the African people. I have partly pointed out above that instead, they focused on the looting, and made everybody believe that they too can make money, and anything else does not matter.

This has made us loose ourselves. The Hub above tries to scantily trace the effects and affects of being Apartheidized for 48 years, and now, we are still enduring 20+ years of ANC, and things have gone from bad to worse. There are no adults ruling/governing and running the government here in Azania/Mzantsi(South Africa). African people are lost, and they have even forgotten or totally shunned their identity, culture and whatever defines them as Indigenous Africans of South Africa.

We have to realize that "we had no control over the fact that the psychiatric phenomena, the mental and behavioral disorders emerging from [Apartheid's] war have loomed os large among the perpetrators of "pacification" and the "pacified" population. The truth is that colonization, in its very essence. already appeared to be a great purveyor of psychiatric hospitals." Fanon found that International and French colonialists, in their scientific works, having difficulties "curing" a colonized subject, meaning, making him thoroughly fit into a social environment of the colonial type(Fanon paraphrased).

"Because it is a systematized negation of the theory, a frenzied determination to deny the other any attribute of humanity, colonialism forces the colonized to constantly ask the question:

"Who am I in reality?"

Anyone who has read the Hub above thus far, can recognize that question above, even if I did not articulate it as did Fanon, but my decrying the fact that we are lost as a people, was my indicating that many things that point our to our present dysfunction, is one effort we are stuck at, trying to really understand and find out who we are. In trying to find ourselves, I have written this article to highlight the importance and dire need and plight we have and are faced with in trying to and beginning to determine and formulate our own ideal/ideas as to what kind of a Nation we would like to be. That is why I have the Question in the Post above: "What Does Mzantsi Mean To You?". We learn further from Fanon that:

"The defensive positions born of this violent confrontation between the colonized and the colonial institute a structure which then reveals the colonized personality. In order to understand this "sensibility," we need only to study and appreciate the scope and depth of the wounds inflicted on the colonized during a single day under a colonial regime.

"We must remember in any case that a colonized people is not hst a dominated people. Under the German occupation, the French remained human beings. In algeria, there is not simply domination, but the decision, literally, to occupy nothing else but territory. The Algerians, the women dressed in 'haikss, the palm groves, and the amels from a landscape, the natural backdrop[mise en scene] for the French Presence.

"A hostile, ungovernable, and fundamentally rebellious Nature is in fact synonymous in the colonies with the bush, the mosquitoes, the 'natives', and disease. colonization has succeeded once this untamed Nature has been brought under control. Cutting railroads through the bush, draining swamps, and ignoring the political and economic existence of the 'native' population are in fact one and the same thing.

"When colonization remains unchallenged by armed resistance, when the sum of handful stimulants exceeds a certain threshold, the colonized's defense collapse, and many of them end up in psychiatric institutions. In the calm of this period of triumphant colonization, a constant and considerable stream of Mental symptoms are direct sequel of this oppression."

This is what has happened to us here in Mzantsi. We never confronted the Aparthidizers in armed conflict, and we 'negotiated' with a powerful and still in control enemy. Now that we have been given a large advance akin to Petty-Apartheid, the Vorster styles one, made large, The ANC is fooling the people that they have elected them democraticlly, when in essence they are replacing heir former master in all spheres of ruling, and in this case, they are 'side-kicks' and not authentic, neither in charge.

We need to look at this metnal disorder even much more deepr and this is made much clearer for us by Wilson below:

Mental Health and The Oppressed..

Healing the Healers And Healing The Victims/Patient/Nation

Wilson informs us:

We are talking about diagnosis and the relationship of mental health diagnosis and racial dogmatism. When social workers and psychologists do not begin with the political system, they become obsessed with "diagnostic procedures." Psychology concerns itself with predicting behavior, with being able to determine to a very fine extent the characteristics and symptomatologies of various mental illnesses. Mental health disciplines concern themselves with the categorization of behavior and the means by which the categorization of behavior and the means by which this process is carried out.

"Getting obsessively involved diagnostic procedures, psychologists and others in this area can deceive themselves into thinking they are doing great scientific work, and that they are politically neutral in their approach to life. Mental problems not only denote a disturbed psyche, that an individual is disturbed, but that that individual disturbs our psyche. When we say an individual is disturbed, we not only indicate that we are having problems with the individual. That the individual is not only disturbed, but disturbs us.

"So then, diagnosis involves a dualistic relationship, not only in terms of what behavior is exhibited by the patient, but how that behavior reflects upon others and the person who is making the diagnosis itself; and it exhibits and exposes the relationship between the person being diagnosed and the one doing the diagnosis.

"Therefore, diagnosis is inherently social in nature, whether it is being done by the psychiatrist, psychologist, sociologist, social worker, or anyone else; Being a social relationship. Psychological diagnosis is a political affair! It is part of the political system.

"So, when we see an individual with a disturbed psyche, the individual disturbs our psyche and our metal equilibrium. In the process of diagnosis it is not only the imbalance of the individual that we are looking at, but the threat to our own mental balance. The individual then is not only disturbing to his own peace of mind: he is disturbing our peace, and in more ways than one, he is disturbing our ways of doing things.

"Therefore, the behavior that we are diagnosing may represent a disturbing questioning of our ways of ding things, our values, and the nature of our social relations. The behavior of the co-called sick individual threatens us, threatens to expose our failures, our hypocrisies, our collusion in bring about the state of mind of the individual who confronts us.

"So, diagnosis is not a one-way street, where both only the patient is looked at. It is a two-way street, where both the patient and the psychiatrist look at each and work out the problem together, not just the patient's problem.

"When we talk about the so-called diagnosing of our people, it involves an analysis not only of the behavior of our people, but the behavior of the society as a whole, and we must recognize this fact and face up to it as a people. Diagnosis then is not merely procedural or neutral. As we have said, it is political to the core: It Is A Political Act.

"Through diagnosis, the ruling society applies its ideological measures to the recalcitrant members of that society. It maintains through diagnosis the status quo, and most of all, through diagnosis, the society - Where that society is unjust — justifies repression.

"Thus, when an individual is labelled in an unjust and unequal society, and is labeled by the very people who maintain its injustice and inequality, then the very diagnostic prices itself, and the very labels attached the victims of that society are the very means by which repression is carried out in that system.

"Consequently, those of us who are in the so-called helping professions and in the business of diagnosing other people's behavior, must recognize the degree to which we are a part of the repressive mechanism of that system."

Wilson breaks down our behavior I have been question and raising above. We need to begin to re-read this whole excerpt, for those of us waxing political or otherwise, that, the wholesome healing of our people,means we, the healers, will have to heal ourselves first, and then, in healing our people realize that we are healing ourselves too. Wilson writes:

"As the system looks its victims in their faces, as it judges them, it sees its own behavior, its own face in the behavior and face of its victims, and of its patients. The crazy behavior,

Sanity Is Not Insanity

Ways Of Seeing And Knowing: Fromm's View Of A Sane Society

Erich Fromm Notes:

“That millions of people share the same forms of mental pathology does not make these people sane.

“The fact that millions of people share the same vices does not make these vices virtues, the fact that they share so many errors does not make the errors to be truths, and the fact that millions of people share the same form of mental pathology does not make these people sane.

“The whole life of the individual is nothing but the process of giving birth to himself; indeed, we should be fully born when we die — although it is the tragic fate of most individuals to die before they are born.

“Both the mentally healthy and the neurotic are driven by the need to find an answer [to the problem of human existence], the only difference being that one answer corresponds more to the total needs of man, and hence is more conducive to the unfolding of his powers and to his happiness than the other. All cultures provide for a patterned system in which certain solutions are predominant, hence certain strivings and satisfactions.... The deviate from the cultural pattern is just as much in search of an answer as his more well-adjusted brother. His answer may be better or worse than the one given by his culture — it is always another answer to the same fundamental question raised by human existence. In this sense all cultures are religious and every neurosis is a private form of religion, provided we mean by religion an attempt to answer the problem of human existence.

“The common element in both submission and domination is the symbiotic nature of relatedness. Both persons involved have lost their integrity and freedom; they live on each other and from each other, satisfying their craving for closeness, yet suffering from the lack of inner strength and self-reliance which would require freedom and independence, and furthermore constantly threatened by the conscious or unconscious hostility which is bound to arise from the symbiotic relationship.10 The realization of the submissive (masochistic) or the domineering (sadistic) passion never leads to satisfaction.

“Reason is man’s faculty for grasping the world by thought, in contradiction to intelligence, which is man’s ability to manipulate the world with the help of thought. Reason is man’s instrument for arriving at the truth, intelligence is man’s instrument for manipulating the world more successfully; the former is essentially human, the latter belongs to the animal part of man.

“It is the task of the "science of man" to arrive eventually at a correct description of what deserves to be called human nature. What has often been called "human nature" is but one of its many manifestations — and often a pathological one — and the function of such mistaken definition usually has been to defend a particular type of society as being the necessary one.

“Each new step into his new human existence is frightening. It always means to give up a secure state, which was relatively known, for one which is new, which one has not yet mastered. Undoubtedly, if the infant could think at the moment of the severance of the umbilical cord, he would experience the fear of dying. A loving fate protects us from this first panic. But at any new step, at any new stage of our birth, we are afraid again. We are never free from two conflicting tendencies: one to emerge from the womb, from the animal form of existence into a more human existence, from bondage to freedom; another, to return to the womb, to nature, to certainty and security.

“Indeed the alienated person finds it almost impossible to remain by himself, because he is seized by the panic of experiencing nothingness.”

We Should Not Escapre From Freedom

Struggling To Stay Free In A Situation Of UnFreedom

These are some musing on From Erich Fromm and shows how those structures get their power from a surprising and deep sense of anxiety that coincides with individual freedom and not just from the external control of others.

Fromm engages in a historical review on the origins of freedom, going back to Europe of the middle ages and touching on economic, political and religious struggles between control and freedom. Being a German who left that country during the rise of Hitler's Third Reich, he has a special concern for how Nazism arose from a society where freedom had been realized. Yet, in the time of his writing, German Nazism is in the past; he also has concern about how freedom and escapes from freedom take place in the context of a democracy like the United States.

Fromm uses a psychoanalytic approach in discussing these mechanisms of freedom and control, since that is his particular area of expertise. Readers might find this aspect of the book "deep soup," and I myself could wish that this book was written without some of this detail simply to make the main points stand out more. But in Fromm's defense-- the need to "escape from freedom" has profound psychological roots, and his approach is needed to demonstrate this.

The real value of this discourse is in its discussion of the paradoxical idea that people struggle for freedom, then they struggle with freedom. They don't really know what to do with freedom once they get it, and they find new controls and structures to control them. At a psychological level, Fromm finds that freedom brings uncertainty and anxiety, whereas a lack of freedom brings certainty and comfort. While freedom seems appealing when people are not free, it brings a sudden and unexpected responsibility. This leads to an anxiety that can simply be overwhelming from a psychological point of view. As a result, people make choices to relieve themselves of this anxiety.

Fromm answers his main question by characterizing the social character of the German people after World War I as one especially susceptible to the message of the Nazi Party. He traces this social character to the individual psychological characters of the people in the German lower middle class. These people have become especially isolated from their work and their society owing to the rise of capitalism that began during the Protestant Reformation, Fromm argues. They have become economically "free" as employees of the capital holders, but this freedom is actually a burden as they try to reconnect the ties to their work that earlier generations enjoyed.

We can see this phenomenon played-out today in numerous areas of life. Those of us with concern about unhealthy, control-based churches and the desire for true spiritual freedom will find true value to this discussion and his insights about the choices to "escape from freedom."

Fromm cites three primary choices that people usually make in their "escape from freedom:"

Authoritarianism: Whether in control or in submission, an authoritarian structure removes choices and freedom from the individual, and it relieves the anxiety.

Automaton Imitation: In the absence of an authoritarian system, individuals conform to a group norm. This becomes the new authority for an individual, and it relieves the individual of the anxiety associated with freedom.

Destruction: People without an authoritarian system or a group norm to conform to often self-destruct. This can be manifested in low self-esteem, self-destructive behavior like crime or addictions or even the extreme of suicide.

A common thread in all of these options is that one initial choice eliminates the need to make future choices. Whatever negatives result from these choices, they are considered preferable to the anxiety and uncertainty that freedom brings.

Fromm's work applies in church settings in several ways. It explains the attraction of authoritarian church systems to people confronted with freedom (and thus experiencing anxiety) in some peculiar way-- perhaps due to emerging into adulthood, experiencing a life transition, moving to a new location, etc. It also explains why these systems often seek people in those sort of circumstances.

Fromm answers his main question by characterizing the social character of the German people after World War I as one especially susceptible to the message of the Nazi Party. He traces this social character to the individual psychological characters of the people in the German lower middle class. These people have become especially isolated from their work and their society owing to the rise of capitalism that began during the Protestant Reformation, Fromm argues. They have become economically "free" as employees of the capital holders, but this freedom is actually a burden as they try to reconnect the ties to their work that earlier generations enjoyed.

The seeds of this isolation are planted by the Protestant doctrines of Luther and Calvin, who teach that man stands alone before God, not with the Catholic Church as an intermediary. Furthermore, they teach that man is essentially bad and must work in order to achieve or prove his salvation. Man is now free from the authority of the Church, but is now responsible for himself before a vengeful God.

Man naturally seeks to escape from the isolation and alienation that accompanies this growing "freedom," Fromm contends. By applying psychoanalytic methods, Fromm concludes that one primary mechanism by which individuals escape is to make themselves dependent on others. Tied directly to this mechanism is a parallel tendency for individuals to try to dominate others. Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party masterfully exploit this mechanism, Fromm explains, by promising their followers a kind of freedom which appeals to their desire to submit to a powerful leader who will lead them into victory over others.

Fromm concludes his work by warning that this kind of psychological need is largely a function of capitalism, which tends to isolate people from their work and from each other. He calls for the creation of a planned socialist economy that allows for the development of true self-awareness and positive development by eliminating the psychological need to "escape" the burden of freedom.

Recogninzig The Othe'r Humanbeingness Is The Key

The Human Situation the Key to Humanistic Realism

I have made notation above that I the ANC forgot how to help the Poor oppressed Africans, emerging from the scourge of Apartheid deal with the present Colonial Menticide foisted on us for the past 48+ years of Apartheid rule. In order to carry on this theme of helping our people begin to realize the causes of their present mental conditions, I will cull some more from Fromm:

PSYCHOANALYSIS-THE HUMAN SITUATION

Man, in respect to his body and his physiological functions, belongs to the animal kingdom. The functioning of the animal is determined by instincts, by specific action patterns which are in turn determined by inherited neurological structures. The higher an animal is in the scale of development, the more flexibility of action pattern and the less completeness of structural adjustment do we find at birth.

In the higher primates we even find considerable intelligence; that is, use of thought for the accomplishment of desired goals, thus enabling the animal to go far beyond the instinctively prescribed action pattern. But great as the development within the animal kingdom is, certain basic elements of existence remain the same.

The animal "is lived" through biological laws of nature; it is part of nature and never transcends it. It has no conscience of a moral nature, and no awareness of itself and of its existence; it has no reason, if by reason we mean the ability to penetrate the surface grasped by the senses and to understand the essence behind that surface; therefore the animal has no concept of the truth, even though it may have an idea of what is useful.

Animal existence is one of harmony between the animal and nature; not, of course, in the sense that the natural conditions do not often threaten the animal and force it to a bitter fight for survival, but in the sense that the animal is equipped by nature to cope with the very conditions it is to meet, just as the seed of a plant is equipped by nature to make use of the conditions of soil, climate, etcetera, to which it has become adapted in the evolutionary process.

At a certain point of animal evolution, there occurred a unique break, comparable to the first emergence of matter, to the first emergence of life, and to the first emergence of animal existence. This new event happens when in the evolutionary process, action ceases to be essentially determined by instinct; when the adaptation of nature loses its coercive character; when action is no longer fixed by hereditarily given mechanisms.

When the animal transcends nature, when it transcends the purely passive role of the creature, when it becomes, biologically speaking, the most helpless animal, man is born. At this point, the animal has emancipated itself from nature by erect posture, the brain has grown far beyond what it was in the highest animal. This birth of man may have lasted for hundreds of thousands of years, but what matters is that a new species arose, transcending nature, that life became aware of itself.

Self-awareness, reason and imagination disrupt the "harmony" which characterizes animal existence. Their emergence has made man into an anomaly, into the freak of the universe. He is part of nature, subject to her physical laws and unable to change them, yet he transcends the rest of nature. He is set apart while being a part; he is homeless, yet chained to the home he shares with all creatures.

Cast into this world at an accidental place and time, he is forced out of it, again accidentally. Being aware of himself, he realizes his powerlessness and the limitations of his existence. He visualizes his own end: death. Never is he free from the dichotomy of his existence: he cannot rid himself of his mind, even if he should want to; he cannot rid himself of his body as long as he is alive—and his body makes him want to be alive.

Reason, man's blessing, is also his curse; it forces him to cope everlastingly with the task of solving an insoluble dichotomy. Human existence is different in this respect from that of all other organisms; it is in a state of constant and unavoidable disequilibrium. Man's life cannot "be lived" by repeating the pattern of his species; he must live.

Man is the only animal that can be bored, that can feel evicted from paradise. Man is the only animal who finds his own existence a problem which he has to solve and from which he cannot escape. He cannot go back to the prehuman state of harmony with nature; he must proceed to develop his reason until he becomes the master of nature, and of himself.

But man's birth ontogenetically as well as phylogenetically is essentially a negative event. He lacks the instinctive adaptation to nature, he lacks physical strength, he is the most helpless of all animals at birth, and in need of protection for a much longer period of time than any of them. While he has lost the unity with nature, he has not been given the means to lead a new existence outside of nature.

His reason is most rudimentary, he has no knowledge of nature's processes, nor tools to replace the lost instincts; he lives divided into small groups, with no knowledge of himself or of others; indeed, the biblical Paradise myth expresses the situation with perfect clarity.

Man, who lives in the Garden of Eden, in complete harmony with nature but without awareness of himself, begins his history by the first act of freedom, disobedience to a command. Concomitantly, he becomes aware of himself, of his separateness, of his helplessness; he is expelled from Paradise, and two angels with fiery swords prevent his return.

Man's evolution is based on the fact that he has lost his original home, nature—and that he can never return to it, can never become an animal again. There is only one way he can take: to emerge fully from his natural home, to find a new home—one which he creates, by making the world a human one and by becoming truly human himself.

When man is born, the human race as well as the individual, he is thrown out of a situation which was definite, as definite as the instincts, into a situation which is indefinite, uncertain and open. There is certainty only about the past, and about the future as far as it is death—which actually is return to the past, the inorganic state of matter.

The problem of man's existence, then, is unique in the whole of nature; he has fallen out of nature, as it were, and is still in it; he is partly divine, partly animal; partly infinite, partly finite. The necessity to find ever-new solutions for the contradictions in his existence, to find ever-higher forms of unity with nature, his fellowmen and himself, is the source of all psychic forces which motivate man, of all his passions, affects and anxieties.

The animal is content if its physiological needs—its hunger, its thirst and its sexual needs—are satisfied. Inasmuch as man is also animal, these needs are likewise imperative and must be satisfied. But inasmuch as man is human, the satisfaction of these instinctual needs is not sufficient to make him happy; they are not even sufficient to make him sane.

The archimedic point of the specifically human dynamism lies in this uniqueness of the human situation; the understanding of man's psyche must be based on the analysis of man's needs stemming from the conditions of his existence.

The problem, then, which the human race as well as each individual has to solve is that of being born. Physical birth, if we think of the individual, is by no means as decisive and singular an act as it appears to be. It is, indeed, an important change from intrauterine into extrauterine life; but in many respects the infant after birth is not different from the infant before birth; it cannot perceive things outside, cannot feed itself; it is completely dependent on the mother, and would perish without her help. Actually, the process of birth continues.

The child begins to recognize outside objects, to react affectively, to grasp things and to co-ordinate his movements, to walk. But birth continues. The child learns to speak, it learns to know the use and function of things, it learns to relate itself to others, to avoid punishment and gain praise and liking. Slowly, the growing person learns to love, to develop reason, to look at the world objectively.

He begins to develop his powers; to acquire a sense of identity, to overcome the seduction of his senses for the sake of an integrated life. Birth then, in the conventional meaning of the word, is only the beginning of birth in the broader sense. The whole life of the individual is nothing but the process of giving birth to himself; indeed, we should be fully born, when we die—although it is the tragic fate of most individuals to die before they are born.

From all we know about the evolution of the human race, the birth of man is to be understood in the same sense as the birth of the individual. When man had transcended a certain threshold of minimum instinctive adaptation, he ceased to be an animal; but he was as helpless and unequipped for human existence as the individual infant is at birth. The birth of man began with the first members of the species homo sapiens, and human history is nothing but the whole process of this birth.

It has taken man hundreds of thousands of years to take the first steps into human life; he went through a narcissistic phase of magic omnipotent orientation, through totemism, nature worship, until he arrived at the beginnings of the formation of conscience, objectivity, brotherly love. In the last four thousand years of his history, he has developed visions of the fully born and fully awakened man, visions expressed in not too different ways by the great teachers of man in Egypt, China, India, Palestine, Greece and Mexico.

The fact that man's birth is primarily a negative act, that of being thrown out of the original oneness with nature, that he cannot return to where he came from, implies that the process of birth is by no means an easy one. Each step into his new human existence is frightening. It always means to give up a secure state, which was relatively known, for one which is new, which one has not yet mastered.

Undoubtedly, if the infant could think at the moment of the severance of the umbilical cord, he would experience the fear of dying. A loving fate protects us from this first panic. But at any new step, at any new stage of our birth, we are afraid again.

We are never free from two conflicting tendencies: one to emerge from the womb, from the animal form of existence into a more human existence, from bondage to freedom; another, to return to the womb, to nature, to certainty and security.

In the history of the individual, and of the race, the progressive tendency has proven to be stronger, yet the phenomena of mental illness and the regression of the human race to positions apparently relinquished generations ago, show the intense struggle which accompanies each new act of birth.(Fromm)

The Revolution Is Now On The Social Media

From Revolution To Negotiations Of Entitlement

What we have here in Mzantsi is a failure to communicate and respect one another. That is describing Apartheid in a nutshell. The prohibition and inhibition of other humans of their humanity is one of the most dastardly things that apartheid did. As Fromm put it, they have denied us to grow our birth into a broader birth. They have stunted our growth as human being and free people. The Apartheid regime made it its business to dehumanize Africans to the extent that we are witnessing today.

Now, today, it is unfathomable how the present African elected government has not grown into governing adults. I have written about this in one of my published Hubs that the ANC leadership left in the 60's bing small boys, and they came back in 1994 as grown up old men, who had frozen boyhood memories, and now are acting them out childish schtick as the new rulers of South Africa. A bunch of Old men are now running South Africa like it's the world of their imaginations/fantasies, as young men in exile since the 1960s. They kept on dreaming of returning home, and they used to say: "When We Take Over..." [This and that will happen] This is the nub of our problem. There are no adults in power, and the house is run by children(Grown Older) running amok.

The large armies of the poor who never left, were left with dashed hope of grandiose in terms of what should happen once this "Boys" came home and took power. The masses were waiting for liberators, but all they got were quislings, turncoats, sell outs and cabals who were in the service of the enemies of the people: Apartheid and International Imperialism in all its forms. The level of corruption has taken the oxygen out of the whole country. People, just watching, are suffocating at the types and levels of rotten leadership and all what they are doing with the bevy of harems, fleets of astoundingly expensive cars; riches beyond anyone's dreams, and these are flaunted for all the poor to see. And the poor, who when watching this madness, are also just as 'loco' as a citizenry and nonexistent as a nation.

Having read the last cited works of Fromm, and the way he paints the existence and role of man in nature and with nature, that is why I write such Hubs, to begin to inform the African readers in South Africa who have been told that they were never human being, they really belong to the animal kingdom. Well, Fromm says that we, as human being, are part of the Animal Kingdom, but we have penchant and human need to grown out of and develop our condition, even though we may be embedded in that natural environ. This is profound, for it exposes the lie that Africans are non human. That is based on our Dark/Brown skin, nothing else. What differentiates us from other human being, well, is the fact that we were the first Human in Africa, and this, cannot be changed nor denied.

If we know where we are coming from, as per Fromm, and recognize the history and story of our culture and customs, we need not get enamored by the other cultures at the expense of our own indigenous culture. We should not be trying so hard, we Africans South Of Africa, not to be so caught-up in trying to Ape other peoples cultures, but should be able to live within our own cultural skin and principles/customs. We have lost ourselves because we have been in the Concentration Camps of Apartheid for so long, that we have not even had a chance to know what it is like to rule ourselves and have ourselves running our country-for our four centuries now: This can be seen with the bungling ANC rule for the past 20+ years to date.

The masses of African people, as a Nation, not yet formed or untied, but divided according to Apartheid's formation of "tribes," and a new African government in Mzantsi, which has never ruled a people or a country, collude at the point where unification should have been forged. The ANC operates as a government, but behaves like a Liberation movement; the masses of South Africa, who have as yet to sober up from Apartheid vicious treatment, have not yet even had the chance to change and form a nation, along with the government they elected, into an autonomous and viable democracy, is instead considering a 'putsch'.

It is the case of the Blind leading the disabled, silenced and blind polity that is trying hard to follow the act of the young government. There is not understanding nor unity that is being forged. Instead, the victims of Apartheid are expected to behave like a normal and free people. As we have see above, from Fromm, the former victims of Apartheid are apprehensive about the fact that they are supposed to be free. The ANC is confused what to do with the so-called freedom that has been handed to them in a platter. Governance, for the ANC, inside South Africa, is 20+ years old. We can go back as far as 1652, to 1992, there is nowhere where we had complete and self rule as we are experiencing today.

The led and their leaders are suffering from Freedom anxieties which both have never experienced nor have a record or culture of. This was destroyed by the wars between the Africans and the Boers, The Africans and English, The Africans against the both the Boers and the English. This is and was/still is a great recipe for confusion, dysfunction, fear, uncertainties, and a form of underdevelopment, which is threatening the very power of the ANC, which they wield arrogantly, involved with corruption, and undermining any gains they might have made since they fled into exile in the early sixties. One can cull lessons from Liberia regarding the situation in South Africa, of which many do not even know, remember or conveniently forget about that.

Doe stated:

… The meaning of the Revolution is misunderstood by many of you. Even after half a year, people are still hoping and dreaming of the impossible. They are thinking that the Revolution means instant prosperity; plenty of new jobs; big cars; big houses; and all of the fine things of the world. In other words, they feel that this is a revolution of Entitlement. White recognizing the growing wave of your rising expectations, I should let you know that the PTC government cannot solve ll the nation's problems overnight."

At least, to a certain degree, Doe, was more truthful, and whatever his later outcome, he recognized what here in South Africa was expected to happened when the ANC negotiated with the Boers. People were pregnant with expectation as to the outcome of the ANC taking power; but all their hopes and trust and everything they invested into the outcome of "Those Talks About The Talks," they were left with aborted hopes. And drunken plus shattered unrealistic expectations, and this is where we are at in Mzantsi today. Whither Mzantsi?...

Forward Ever; Backward Never: The Struggle Has Been Continuing

We Are Who We Say We Are... Naming And Power

There is a foreboding sense of entitlement amongst the African ruling elite in South Africa. This is borne by the fact that they dumped their initial principles of the Freedom Charter, and opted for what I call 'Vulture Capitalism'. In his discourses about "Economics of Maladjustments," Wilson writes:

"Why do we suffer from this problem then? Why is the Black(African) personality created? I try to get across the fact that every maladjusted characteristic in the Black(African) personality serves an economic function. Eah maladjustive characteristic is not there by accident; it's not there simply becasue the Europeans hate hate us; It's there becasue it maintains their economic dominance.

"If I've got money I can help you, but if I distrust you, I won't help you and you many not take it. It's not the absence of money...it's the presence of mistrust. If I do not coorporate, If you cannot rely on me, then we cannot have an economic system, even though we may have money. In other words, a people must trust, be reliable, be dependable, have respect for each other if they are to develop a viable economic system.

"When they have those kinds of relationships, they have a social system,, and they can build and they grow economically. Suspiciousness and other negatives are implemented in the collective Black(African) personality so that African people cannot challenge European people, even though we are a majority of the people on this Earth and we live over the riches of the earth."

"A people who do not share history, who do not appreciate the shared experiences that their history represents, are a people who cannot utilize mutual trust, dependability, and so forth, upon which to build an economic social system. African people who forget their history, are a people who forget that they had an economy before the European came into existence. They are a people who forget that their economy was developed and maintained prior to the European Imperial ascendancy."

When I call the present quislings in power Vulture Capitalist, and stated that they forgot about the african masses, it is because, from the 1960s to the present, the ANC has lost it connection and connectedness to the masses of African South African, whilst they were locked-up in their caps in Exile. They have, since they came into power, impacted and isolated if not implanted negativity into the psyche and personality of the Africans in Mzantsi, personality, that we are now at a stage and state wherein we are in the midst of a developing 'Putsch'.

With an attitude of arrogance and mien, they display a sense of their entitlement to the power they are now immersed-in for the past 20+ years. This sense of entitlement made them ignore and treat all those people who never went into exile, but stayed at home and fought with the Boers, as if they are the ones that were fighting the Boers! This lie is their modus operandi and raison d'être ere for behaving and carrying on as they are malgoverning our country and people.Corruption has become their badge of hone and united brotherhood of thieves. In the process, they govern like they are running their Exile campus-camps, and they have not brought in any new ideas except further oppress, depress, suppress and carry-on like they are foreign invaders who do not care what and now the people feel or fare under their rule. They are suffering from and ignoring, if not, suddenly forgotten their history. Wilson states:

Amnesia means an undiscovered self, an emptiness, a self incapable of self-understanding, incapable of understanding its own motivations, a self incapable of self-direction and their self-determination, a reactionary self, a self that does not understand other or the world in which it exists — a fatalistic externalized self. To rediscover one's history is not only an act of self-discovery; it is an act of self-creation — a resurrection from the dead, a tearing away of the veil of the mystery.

"To discover our history is to discover our somethingness (beingness)before someone else created us. To come to know ourselves as we were prior to our re-recreation by aliens means we will be in charge of our own becoming, the creators of our own consciousness, the creation of ourselves as namers of the world, the namers of ourselves which gives us the power of self-determination and self-direction."

Then Wilson went ahead and posted this Poem:

What is the past? Where is the past?

Is it nothing which is something"

Is it something left behind — discarded, detached, forgotten?

- Without influence and therefore of no account?

Does it or can it exist outside the mind and memory of man?

Or is it not present in our genes where we carry the

evolutionary existence of our kind?

Are we not then its present unfolding, its evolvement and manifestation?

Or is it not congealed in concrete mortar.

Stone and steel structures and folkways?

Traditions, mores and ways of relating?

Is it still present in the negation, its

reconstitution, when is transformed

into something new?

Is history ever forgotten, or is it merely transformed?

Even in the new, history still remains

for the new is fashioned from the old

Therefore, what is now is fashioned from before, Hence, we never leave history behind

Isn't the new, then, something old

History conscious or unconscious, comprehended or

uncomprehended — never ceases to be;

it is only transformed

As transformation, history is always here and now...

Here today, there tomorrow

History is past, present and future:

History is destiny

If we will to transform destiny, we must will to transform history!

These are the lesson that the present-day rulers in South Africa are willing to forget, ignore and instead, carry on their vulture capitalist ways. The moans and groans, wails and cries of the poor have turned them, the rulers, into deaf mutes. They hear not nor see the coming conflagration.

Many people are complaining, that is, seven or eight people out of ten, in the poor sectors of the poor masses and economically disenfranchised Africans and other ethnic groups in South Africa.

Yes, we can blame Apartheid, which is still there. Where will time come when we begin to 'critique and anti-cirtique' ourselves and Mao Tse Tung advices us thusly:

"We should not become complacent over any success. We should check our complacency and constantly criticize our shortcomings, just as we should wash our face or sweep the floor every day to keep them clean."

I would like to further add the sage advice of Amilcar Cabral below:

Tell No Lies, Claim No Easy Victories...

Always bear in mind that the people are not fighting for ideas, for the things in anyone's head. They are fighting to win material benefits, to live better and in peace, to see their lives go forward, to guarantee the future of their children .

We should recognize as a matter of conscience that there have been many faults and errors in our action whether political or military: an important number of things we should have done we have not done at the right times, or not done at all.

In various regions-and indeed everywhere in a general sense-political work among the people and among our armed forces has not been done appropriately: responsible workers have not carried or have not been able to carry through the work of mobilization, formation and political organization defined by the party leadership. Here and there, even among responsible workers, there has been a marked tendency to let things slide . . . and even a certain demobilization which has not been fought and eliminated....

On the military plane, many plans and objectives established by the Party leadership have not been achieved. With the means we have, we could do much more and better. Some responsible workers have misunderstood the functions of the army and guerrilla forces, have not made good co-ordination between these two and, in certain cases, have allowed themselves to be influenced by preoccupation with the defense of our positions, ignoring the fact that, for us, attack is the best means of defense …

And with all this as a proof of insufficient political work among our armed forces, there has appeared a certain attitude of 'militarism' which has caused some fighters and even some leaders to forget the fact that we are armed militants and not militarists. This tendency must be urgently fought and eliminated within the army …

If ten men go to a rice field and do the day's work of eight, there's no reason to be satisfied. It's the same in battle. Ten men fight like eight; that's not enough . . . . One can always do more. Some people get used to the war, and once you get used to a thing it's the end: you get a bullet up the spout of your gun and you walk around. You hear the motor on the river and you don't use the bazooka that you have, so the Portuguese boats pass unharmed. Let me repeat: one can do more. We have to throw the Portuguese out .

Create schools and spread education in all liberated areas. Select young people between 14 and 20, those who have at least completed their fourth year, for further training. Oppose without violence all prejudicial customs, the negative aspects of the beliefs and traditions of our people. Oblige every responsible and educated member of our Party to work daily for the improvement of their cultural formation .

Oppose among the young, especially those over 20, the mania for leaving the country so as to study elsewhere, the blind ambition to acquire a degree, the complex of inferiority and the mistaken idea which leads to the belief that those who study or take courses will thereby become privileged in our country tomorrow . . . . But also oppose any ill will towards those who study or wish to study-the complex that students will be parasites or future saboteurs of the Party …

In the liberated areas, do everything possible to normalize the political life of the people. Section committees of the Party (tabanca committees), zonal committees, regional committees, must be consolidated and function normally. Frequent meetings must be held to explain to the population what is happening in the struggle, what the Party is endeavoring to do at any given moment, and what the criminal intentions of the enemy may be.

In regions still occupied by the enemy, reinforce clandestine work, the mobilization and organization of the populations, and the preparation of militants for action and support of our fighters.

Develop political work in our armed forces, whether regular or guerrilla, wherever they may be. Hold frequent meetings. Demand serious political work from political commissars. Start political committees, formed by the political commissar and commander of each unit in the regular army.

Oppose tendencies to militarism and make each fighter an exemplary militant of our Party.

Educate ourselves, educate other people, the population in general, to fight fear and ignorance, to eliminate little by little the subjection to nature and natural forces which our economy has not yet mastered. Convince little by little, n~ particular the militants of the Party, that we shall end by conquering the fear of nature, and that man is the strongest force in nature.

Demand from responsible Party members that they dedicate themselves seriously to study, that they interest themselves in the things and problems of our daily life and struggle in their fundamental and essential aspect, and not simply in their appearance Learn from life, learn from our people, learn from books, learn from the experience of others. Never stop learning.

Responsible members must take life seriously, conscious of their responsibilities, thoughtful about carrying them out, and with a comradeship based on work and duty done .

Nothing of this is incompatible with the joy of living, or with love for life and its amusements, or with confidence in the future and in our work....

Reinforce political work and propaganda within the enemy's armed forces. Write posters, pamphlets, letters. Draw slogans on the roads. Establish cautious links with enemy personnel who want to contact us. Act audaciously and with great initiative in this way . . . . Do everything possible to help enemy soldiers to desert. Assure them of security so as to encourage their desertion. Carry out political work among Africans who are still in enemy service, whether civilian or military. Persuade these brothers to change direction so as to serve the Party within enemy ranks or desert with arms and ammunition to our units.

We must practice revolutionary democracy in every aspect of our Party life. Every responsible member must have the courage of his responsibilities, exacting from others a proper respect for his work and properly respecting the work of others. Hide nothing from the masses of our people. Tell no lies. Expose lies whenever they are told. Mask no difficulties, mistakes, failures. Claim no easy victories.

Going back to the basics is what the ruling ANC has to begin to look at. The rat-race that has become the bane of the ruling ANC party, is worse for wear, and will not really lead to a prosperous African Nation South Of Africa: Azania. We have to name things, and empower ourselves in so doing-fashion the world in our own image and everything we would wish to impose or develop about our people's futures. Somehow, Wilson and many other revolutionaries, have realized that being honest, truthful and honest to the people, is key. To this end, the ball is still in the ANC court...

What State Of Which African South African Nation Are We Talking About?

Julius Malema and his Economic Freedom Fighters’ dramatic exploits in parliament have been whipping up unprecedented focus and interest in the post-apartheid, interracial South African National Assembly. This is State the Nation address Drama

South Africa: In what condition is the state of the nation?

Pusch Comey Wrote:

It was telling when Julius Malema’s newly formed Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) won 25 seats in the 400-seat ANC-dominated parliament in May 2014. For a new party renowned largely for punching the ruling party below the belt in political street fights, pundits and critics presumed that the EFF in parliament would just be a tame horse, saddled by the rules of parliament. But they were all in for a major surprise.

The EFF’s entry into South Africa’s hallowed chambers has meant much more than giving the ANC (in power for the last two decades), a hefty reality check. In the full glare of the media, for the past nine months the world has watched embarrassing political clashes reminiscent of a tavern brawl, right inside the respected House, as the EFF harangued, even mocked the ANC and its leader President Jacob Zuma in many parliamentary debates and proceedings, especially the infamous Nkandla-gate.

In scenes never experienced in 20 years since apartheid ended, the ANC, which has 238 seats in the house, has at times been reduced to ridicule and left to spectate as Malema and his colleagues have torn the ruling party apart, demanding that it be more economically accountable to the majority poor: black South Africans. Many observers say what has been happening in the South African parliament at the hands of the EFF is simply an extension of the reality on the ground outside it.

Since ascending to his current status as leader of the EFF, having been expelled from the ANC for insubordination, Malema’s version of political populism, and his message of economic freedom for black South Africans, has resonated with the electorate, as poverty, unemployment and inequality continue to hog the headlines, and it remains at the heart of South Africa’s post-apartheid political discourse.

But the ANC has not been all bad news for the country, as its critics (including Malema) would like the world to believe. To a large extent, the black-majority ruling party has upheld the rule of law. It has had its political challenges since coming to power, but most have been overcome. However, it is on the question of poverty, inequality and unemployment that it has struggled to find a satisfactory solution, especially on the question of massive inequalities between blacks and whites.

After 20 years of black rule, about 10% of the whites still control 95% of the economy. And the thorny issue of the same 10% whites owning about 80% of South Africa’s best land, remains unresolved. Meanwhile, it is generally acknowledged that corruption, especially in the state-controlled sectors, has spiralled out of control in recent years.

Inequality and poverty is why the use of R246 million ($25 million) of taxpayers’ money on the private homestead of President Jacob Zuma (Nkandla), passed off as security upgrades, struck such a raw nerve among the populace. An investigation by the Public Protector Thuli Madonsela recommended that the president pay back a portion for non-security upgrades, valued at R20 million ($1.9 million). However, the president has refused to admit liability and will not “pay back the money” – a mantra that has become the EFF’s rallying call in every parliamentary session, but one which has also reverberated across the country.

A parliament of “fouls”The EFF’s brash behaviour in parliament has widely been condemned as crude, but one thing is for sure – their unruly behaviour has drawn an intense public and global focus onto the country’s parliament. Since the last heated question-time in August, when EFF parliamentarians, who wear their trademark red berets and workers’ overalls into parliament, rowdily chanted “pay back the money”, forcing a rattled President Zuma to leave the chamber, he has not returned to parliament.

Many more shocking events in parliament have amused the nation and the world at large, including riot police being called in to intervene. There have been scuffles and brawls. Some MPs have ended up in hospital for treatment. During debates there has been foul language used and middle fingers shown at opposing MPs. Documents have been torn to shreds in front of press cameras.

An attempt by the Deputy President Cyril Rhamaphosa to calm the situation at a joint meeting of all parties failed. A disciplinary hearing was called to deal with the issues, but the opposition boycotted it. Matters were made worse when the ANC adopted a one-sided report that cleared President Zuma of any wrongdoing in the Nkandla saga and declared that he was not liable, and therefore, need not “pay back the money”.

But according to insiders, 2015 is the year the ANC has decided it will no longer tolerate an opposition, whose combined strength is only 37% of the electoral votes, that keeps bringing parliament into disrepute. But in Malema’s camp, this is the year to scale up their rabble-rousing.

Strange bedfellowsBut also interesting in the parliamentary saga is the rare, eyebrow-raising show of a united opposition, particularly the curious solidarity formed between two ideological foes, the EFF and the white-led Democratic Alliance (DA). In the parliamentary fights they have closed ranks and adopted common positions, with MPs from either camp supporting each other, at times to the hilt. Some DA parliamentarians even physically intervened to defend the EFF when riot police were called in. It was some of the party’s MPs that had to receive hospital treatment. Indeed, as they say, politics makes strange bedfellows.

Not so long ago, Julius Malema’s acerbic tongue lashed out at the DA leader Helen Zille – who he once described as a “racist little girl” – when he referred to black women in the DA (who included the outspoken former DA parliamentary leader Lindiwe Mazibuko) as “tea ladies”. Zille scathingly traded these insults back. Therefore, the two parties suddenly beginning to cosy up in parliament is quite a turnaround. For example, there was the week that both EFF and DA parliamentarians refused to respect the authority of the Speaker, Baleka Mbete, and the sanctity of the chair itself, arguing that she cannot be an honest and impartial broker as she also sits as the chairperson of the ruling party ANC. She was asked to step down, but stood her ground.

Consequently, her rulings and those of her deputies have been met with open defiance and in some cases, Mbete has had to deal with foul and unparliamentary language and catcalling.

But as the second and third biggest opposition parties, a united front makes political sense. The DA has long cherished the idea of a coalition of opposition forces to break the back of the ANC behemoth. With the firepower that the EFF brings, the opposition is seemingly punching far above its weight.There are many reasons as to why this political dalliance is being questioned. For example, the EFF’s policy position of land redistribution, and the nationalisation of key sectors of the economy, stand in stark contrast to the stance of the centre-right DA.

And while another reason may lie in the political principle of “divide and rule”, which works well when the numbers are not on your side, it has long been said by political pundits that the only way the ANC’s liberation strength can be tamed is if it implodes from within and splits up.

However, the ANC has been able to survive internal fissures, the most serious of which was the formation of COPE (Congress of the People), which emerged after the recall of President Thabo Mbeki in 2008. In the 2009 elections they performed well, with 30 members of parliament and 7.42% cent of the vote. Since then the party has imploded amid leadership struggles. COPE now has less than 1% of the votes and two seats in the current parliament. Most of its members have re-defected into the cooler tent of the ANC.

The DA on the other hand has a solid electoral base amongst the white and mixed race population in Western Cape Province. The biggest problem however is their inability to secure black votes. Demographics and identity politics play a huge role in a country that is about 80% black, and with a history of discrimination drawn along colour lines.

Conversely, the ANC has only been able to attract about 1% of white votes. If the rising EFF manages to seriously dent the ANC, the balance of forces would make the DA stronger as they consolidate their base and stump for black votes.

They have consistently elected young black parliamentary leaders who speak the language of the majority black electorate and have sought to promote blacks into positions of power, albeit while retaining real control. In the Western Cape the mixed race (coloured) vote helped the Mayor of Cape Town, Patricia de Lille, who was once a centre-left politician of the withered Pan African Congress (PAC), secure her office.

Meanwhile, the ANC, at its birthday bash on 10 January, chose Cape Town as the venue for its 103rd anniversary celebrations. For many, this was a tactic openly aimed at claiming control of the DA’s stronghold – the Western Cape, the only province the ANC does not run.

Will the EFF go the way of COPE? It does not seem so. Rather, they seem to be growing stronger. At their first annual Party Congress in December 2014, the event went smoothly, with Julius Malema being elected party president unopposed, and choosing his preferred candidates in top positions.

Talk of dissent and divisions within the EFF quickly fizzled out amid reconciliatory speeches. Although it remains to be seen, the EFF confidently believes it will give the ANC a serious run for the black electoral vote, come the municipal elections in 2016. Apart from its public-pleasing mantra – “we will overthrow economic apartheid” – the EFF believes another of its advantages is that it honed its political skills within the ANC, so it is a case of “knowing the enemy”.

Interestingly, in his keynote speech at the ANC’s 103rd anniversary bash, a feisty Jacob Zuma was accused of sounding just like Malema and stealing from the EFF book, when he spoke of de-racialisation of the economy, land redistribution, the pain of apartheid, pan-Africanism and economic freedom, using all the vote-catching revolutionary talk that propelled Malema to his current status. Whether this attempt to co-opt EFF policies will translate into reality remains to be seen. After all, Malema’s EFF does not carry the burden of governance.

But with parliament re-opening this month and President Zuma delivering his State of the Nation speech, there was a lot to expect. The main question is, however: what condition will the state of the nation and its parliament be in, in 2015?

On Education Per Jose Marti

Jose Marti....

Jose Marti..

"On Education"Popular Education:1. Instruction is not the same as education: the former refers to thought, the latter principally to feelings. Nevertheless, thee is no good education without instruction. Moral qualities rise in price when they are enhanced by qualities of intellect.2. Popular Education does not mean education of the poorer classes exclusively, but rather that all classes in the nation, tantamount to saying the people-be well educated. Just as there is no reason why the rich are educated and not the poor, what reason is there for the poor to be educated and not the rich. they are all the same.3.He who knows more is worth more. to know is to possess. Coins are minted, knowledge is not. Bonds or paper money are worth more, or less, or nothing; knowledge always has the same value, and it is always high. A rich man need money with which to live, but he can lose it and then he no longer has the means of living. An instructed man lives from his knowledge, and since he caries it with him, he never loses it and his existence is easy and secure.4. The nappiest nation is the one whose sons/daughters have the best education, both in instruction of thought and the direction of feelings. An instructed people loves work and knows how to derive profit from it. A virtuous people will live a happier and richer life than another that is filled with vices, and will better defend itself from all attacks.5. Every man when he arrives upon this earth has a right to be educated, and then , in payment, the duty to contribute to the education of others.6. An ignorant people can be deceived by superstition and become servile. An instructed people will always be strong and free. An ignorant man is on his way to becoming a beast, and a man instructed in knowledge and conscience is on his way to being a god. One must not hesitate to choose between a nation of gods and a nation of beasts.The best way to "defend our rights is to know them well"; in so doing one has faith and strength; every nation will be unhappy in proportion to how poorly educated are its inhabitants. "A Nation Of Educated Men Will Always Be N Nation Of Free Men". Education is the only means of being saved from slavery. "A Nation Enslaved To Men Of Another Nation Is As repugnant As Being Enslaved To The Men Of One's Own".

Jose Marti, Guatemala (Mexico) 1878

José Julián Martí Pérez is the Cuban national hero and an important figure in Latin American literature..

Pedagogy Of Destruction

Apt Cartoon.. Spot On..

No Classes, the Tree and the natural elements are good enough for these students

Dumped Text Books In South Africa..The destruction of these books raises serious questions about why proper care was not taken to ensure that they were delivered to schools on time at the beginning of the year. These books deliberately destroyed

Most of the books are mathematics texbooks. We have written to MEC Mandla Makupula demanding an explanation as to how valuable public resources for Eastern Cape children were allowed to be destroyed in this irresponsible way. The destruction of thes

Journalists visiting a disused teachers' college in South Africa have uncovered a hoard of wrecked and discarded textbooks, including the biography of national hero Nelson Mandela, in a northern province where more than 5,000 schools are said to be

Textbooks dumped near Komatipoort in Mpumalanga

On Education: Who's Fooling Who? So, This Is Supposed To Be Edumacation, Yeah, Right!

On Education: Who's Fooling Who? So, This Is Supposed To Be 'Edumacation,' yeah, Right!..

Pedagogy On Pedagogy...

When we were growing up and were taken to school, we did not know that we were being Apartheid through the Bantu Education System, But, we learnt and we eventually came to a point where we dislodged the Educational system from our minds through the June 16th Student Revolution.

Throughout those years, many of the student escaped into exile, and those left had to deal with a word form of Education post Jun 16th Revolution of 1976. Now, since the ANC came back from exile, things have now become more complicated and disastrous-if not worse. I will not do the traditional re-enactment of the sad day, but will cover the issues of Education from a different perspective.

Now that we are approaching the anniversary, dubiously renamed Youth Day, but to us remains June 16th 1976, Revolution, I want to talk about the nature and role Education has to play amongst us, without regurgitating the events of that RevolutionaryDay.

One of the most sad and serious mistakes that is being purposely committed by the Ruling ANC is the effort they are making at Dumbing-Down African people and children in a myriad other ways. One of these mistakes made inspired me to write an Article about The Revolution of June 16, 1976, and it was mainly about the History of Education in South Africa. In this article, I would like to add another piece, or article, written byAnnette Lovemore, about the nature of Education today in South Africa, as follows:

There is little reason for celebration when one delves deeper into the results of the 2014 National Senior Certificate (matric) exams. A reply to a DA parliamentary question has revealed that more than half of the 75.8% of learners who passed were effectively grade-appropriately innumerate and fewer learners are taking the subjects that are required to address this country’s critical skills shortage.

I will submit further parliamentary questions to probe:

What is being done to curb the trend away from subjects crucial to the development of critical skills;The details of teacher vacancy levels and teacher qualifications at schools that performed particularly poorly in critical subjects;The details of school-based turnaround strategies; andThe methodology the Minister of Basic Education is using to track turnaround progress, particularly with respect to numeracy and literacy, in each province.

A massive 10 4924 learners failed Mathematics and 49,556 failed Mathematical Literacy. This means that 28% of all learners writing matric last year failed any form of numeracy assessment. What is more startling is that 70% of all learners failed to achieve above 50% for any form of numeracy.

In the case of Mathematics, 4,430 of the learners enrolled to write, did not do so. For Mathematical Literacy, the situation was worse, with 6,261 enrolled learners not writing. The obvious assumption is that these children were likely to fail, and were therefore precluded from writing so that they would not negatively influence their school’s pass rate.

The ratio of Mathematics to Mathematical Literacy is decreasing, contrary to the demands of the labour market. The percentages of learners taking each subject are trending as follows:

The trend shows fewer learners are taking the subjects that are required to address the shortage of critical skills in our country. For example, the following numbers of learners wrote critical subjects:

The above statistics show that our education system and its ability to prepare our children to contribute meaningfully to our economy is severely compromised.

Drastic and urgent action is needed by Minister Motshekga for the sake of our children, their future prospects and the future of our country.

I would like at this juncture to look at different types of Education Ways of Learning And Seeing. These are provided by the following writers, of which I will start with Paulo Freire

Terra Nuova Asked Paulo Freire the following question:

How do you see the situation in Brazil today — on the one hand, the development which makes Brazil a great economy, on the other, the poverty which so harshly punishes the majority of the African population?

Paulo Freire answered the following piece:

"I do not believe anyone with minimum sensitivity in this country, regardless of political position, can live in peace with such a cruel, unfair reality as this. One thing, though, is to feel bad, and immediately find such whiny arguments as "the people are lazy," "the people are uncultured," "Rome was't built in a day," to explain the tragic situation and to defend purely self-serving hypotheses of action; another thing it to be taken by "just rage" and engage in political protest for substantive transformation of reality.

"Mu sensitivity makes me have chills of discomfort when I see, especially in the Brazilian northeast, entire families eating detritus in landfills, eating garbage, they are the "garbage" of an economy that boasts about being the seventh or eighth economy in the world. My hurt sensitivity does more, however, than just give me chills or make me feel offended as a person, it sickens me and pushes me into the political fight for a radical transformation of this unjust society.

"My heart sensitivity makes me sad when I know the number of poor boys and girls of school-age in Brazil are "prohibited" from entering school; when I know that among those who manage to get in, the majority of them are "expelled," and people say they "dropped out." My lashed sensitivity makes me horrified when I know that the illiteracy rate among youths and adults has been increasing in the last years; when I realize the contempt with the public school system has been treated.

"When I verify that, in city like Sao Paulo, there re one million boys and girls being on the streets. But , together, with the horror that such a reality provokes in me, there is the necessary anger and the indispensable indignation that, combined, give me courage to fight democratically for the suppression of this scandalous offense."

The importance of education is still further elucidated by Freire in this interesting colloquy:

I owe to my second wife's father, Aluizio Araujo, for the privilege of studying free at his school; some teachers whose examples I still remember today; the beginning of my studies at the Law School of Recife, When Elza, a very extraordinary woman came into , whose passing away adversely affected, but was my life enhanced by meeting Nita; ten years of pedagogical with urban and rural workers in Pernambuco; my academic work, essential readings; a cert camaraderie with Christ and with Marx, which surprises certain Christians and makes naive Marxists suspicious.

"All these are the ingredients that necessarily permeate and define my progress as an educator. And they are followed by the equally important impact of the rich and challenging 'Exile' experience. This 'Exile' resulted from a theoretical understanding of education found on the respect of the learner, for his/her language, forces his/her class and cultural identity, also, an understanding of the theoretical explanation of the defense of an education that reveals, unveils, that challenges; above all, the "Exile" resulted from the putting into practice of such an understanding of education. It was that practice that frightened, in the sixties and still does today, the dominant, authoritarian and perverse classes. It was the putting into practice of such an education that took me to prison, away from the university, and finally to the almost sixteen years of 'Exile.'"

Many in Mzantsi can relate to what Freire is talking about, and also, there are many who will begin to look at what we call Education in South Africa anew. It is how we amass and cull from the many experiences that we have as a people here in Mzantsi, that we shall be able to begin to solve our problems. If we do not have information, know-how, understanding and a culture of studying and reading, we shall never go anywhere, FAST!

Unless we begin to get serious about what's an impediment to us, lack of reading, studying and stressing a culture of 'reading,' we shall forever remain confused, undeducted(according to how we what that to be our reality) and illiterate in larger numbers. We cannot keep on boasting to those of us who were unfortunate so's not to be educated. Those of us who do so, it means they went into the classroom not well equipped, and came out very poorly edumacated and retrogressive. You cannot pretend that you are not who you re.

Bob Marley said that you cannot run away from yourself, and this is what we are doing very effectively, and the dysfunction we see today, is partly due to the fact that we are ignorant of our Stories, Histories, Cultures, Customs and Traditions. We think that being English speaking(with an Accent for that matter-no matter how we try to fine tune our English Pronunciations) we are worse of for wear-and yet we pretend like we are an advanced people.This particular issue, above, is thoroughly addressed by Fanon.

One of the things that Fanon does is to try and Free the African man/woman from the 'arsenal of complexes that have been developed by the colonial environment. Apartheid and many other 'isms we've had to go through have adversely affect us. We know of the condescending attitude of the former Boer maters, and Fanon in his book 'Black Skin White Mask,' page 31-32 thoroughly addresses this. Fanon writes:

"To speak pidgin to an Africa makes him angry, because he himself is a pidgin-African-talker. But, I will be told, there is no wish, no intention to anger him. I grant this; but it is just this absence of which, this lack of interest, this indifference, this automatic manner of classifying him/her, imprisoning him/her, decivilizing him/her that makes him/her angry."

On page 33, Fanon talks about what he says Mannoni calls or describes as the "Prospero Complex", which will help us, according to Fanon, understand the psychology of colonialism… and Fanon states that when Europeans speaks Pidgin-Africa, is essentially saying: "You'd better keep your place."

Fanon further adds:

"Yes, the Black(African) manis supposed to be a good "African" once this has been laid down, the rest follows for itself. To make him/her talk pidgin is to fasten him tot he effigy of him, to snare him, to imprison him, the eternal victim of an essence, of an 'appearance' for which he is not responsible. ... Certainly I do not contend that the African student is suspect to his fellows or teachers. But outside the university circles, there is an "army of fools": What is important is not to educate them, but teach the African not to be the slave of his archetypes.

"When the African talks of Marx, the first reaction is always the same: "We have brought you up to our level and now you turn against your benefactors. Inmates! Obviously nothing can be expected of you," and then too there is that bludgeoning argument of the plantation-owner in Africa: Our enemy is the teacher.

"What I am asserting is that the European has a fixed concept of the African, and there is nothing more exasperating than to be asked: "How long have you been in France? You speak French so well."

"It can be argued that people say this because many Africans speak pidgin. But that would be too easy. You are on a train and you ask another passenger: "I beg your pardon, sir, would you mind telling me where the dinning-car is?" "Sure, fella, you go out do, see, go corridor, you go straight, go one car, go two car, go three car, you there."

"No, speaking pidgin African classes off the African man or woman; it perpetuates a state of conflict in which the Whit man injects the African with extremely dangerous foreign bodies. Nothing is more astonishing that to hear an African man express himself properly, for then, in truth, he is putting on the White world.

"I have had occasion to talk to with students of foreign origin. They speak French badly: Little Crusoe, alias Prospero, is at ease then. He explains, informs, interprets, helps them with their studies. But with an African, he is completely baffled; the African has made himself just as knowledgable. With him this game cannot be played, he is a complete replica of the White man. So there is nothing to do but to give in."

"After all that has just been said, it will be understood that the fist impulse of the African man is to say 'no' to those who attempt to build a definition of him. it is unreasonable that the first action of the African is a 'reaction', and, since the African is appraised in terms of the extent of his assimilation, it is also understandable why the newcomer expresses himself only in French. It is because he wants to emphasize the rapture that has now occurred. He is incarnating a new type of man that he imposes on his associates and his family. And so, his old mother can no longer understand him when he talks to her about his 'duds', the family's 'crummy joint,' the 'dump' ... all of it, of course, tricked out with appropriate accent.

In every country of the world there are climbers. "the ones who forget who they are," and, in contrast to them, "the ones who remember where they came from." The Antilles African who goes home from France expresses himself in dialect if he want to make it plain that nothing has changed. One can feel this at the dock where his family and his friends are waiting or him.

"Waiting for him not only because he is physically arriving, but in the sense of waiting for the chance to strike back. They need a minute or two in order to make their diagnosis. If the voyager tells his acquaintances, "I am so happy to be back with you. Good Lord, it is hot in this country, I shall certainly not be able to under it very long," they know: "Fanon European has got off the ship."

"From What Fanon is saying above, we can recognize a lot of African South Africans who have gone Overseas, particularly the United States in our case. Some people even go for three weeks to New Or somewhere in the farms of the US, and when they come back, they can no longer speak our language!? Many of Africans who have gone overseas, the US in particular, whenever they come back, they talk about they are now "Missing Way Back Home," and in this they means the US.

" Some may have left for a few months or some years, but on coming back to us, some change how they walk, talk English, talking about a life they think is fascinating to us who have never gone anywhere. My point being that, what Fanon is saying above, is what we see, daily in South Africa. Some, who have never even left the country or go to the Protectorates, whatsoever, they are presenting themselves as Americans, as they see on TV and the Web.

Education may be going to school, but there is also education in life and about life. Right now, we have a lot of people who present false knowledge to us, without understanding that they are worse-off of than us who are really ignorant. What they do not tell our people is that the Americans, whenever these South Africans are in America, as they spin their tongues to talk some British-fied English, are asked about their 'Accent'.

"At times, they tend to speak less, because they begin to learn that their accents are throwing them off.. And in many cases they resort to talking our own homegrown languages in America, amongst themselves. But, when they come back to South Africa, they resort to be Americans with an Africa/British Accent-in a South Africanized tone… Dang!

Our results are declining as I have posted in the first article above, and this is because many of us are not paying attention, and many are busy trying to boast, impress and talk-down to the poor who do not have the opportunities they might have had about going overseas. So that, education in South Africa, to many of these wannabe's, is not important, except that what they consider their own education, is good to gloat and flaunt it to the admiring but puzzled poor and uneducated Africa… This is one of the most deadly and serious flaws we have and are facing as a people today in Mzantsi.

So long as we look askance fro the responsibilities of righting our educational system, confusion, misinformation, illiteracy will be our e forever more. This is important to note for we have dropped drastically from the Days of Bantu Education, which we hated, to this form of amorphous and miseducation that we are now facing and dealing with(If we are doing anything about it).

What is going to happen to the present-day generations in their very near future, when some of us might become disabled with age and not be able to raise these issues on the forever evolving and fast moving Viral Stream. Who will teach our children the right things and how to rule a nation. We have even forgotten as to how to run a society , and have as yet to form a nation. The games many people are playing trying to get rich quickly, is our downfall, and we have neglected the importance of Education for ourselves and our people.

Many of us, here in Mzantsi think this is not important, but, the truth keeps on smashing us in our faces, we are in a totally dysfunctional society with the many issues I have raised above, through Freire and Fanon, that we still have so much to do… Whither, Mzantsi?

Below are the same, if not worse-off outside classes for children in our Country-Supposedly the richest in Africa. Also, one can see the many books that have been dumped and children lack text books. So, This is How far we have come in the 20+ years of African Rule in south Africa. This is what we try not to talk about, not ignore, neither care for, and are busy carrying on our lives as if we are a first World country. This is going to come back and haunt us very much

If we allow many people to burn schools, libraries, clinics and what have you, what it is that we think will be the final outcome. Some do not care because their children are in Private Model C Students. Yet, we go about throughout our country in modern cars, clothes, and acting up like little children, when the small kids are made to suffer… There is no Solution here, and we are the makers of the decrepit tomorrow-for us and our Children. We are really much better this...

Looking At The Mirror.. What Do I see Looking Back At Me: Me Myself And My African I...

Writing this part of the Hub has bee the hardest thing for me to do. I have to write it as a Historian, and An African. But mostly, the hardest part of it all, is to write it as an African South African. Right now, we are at the cusp of a serious amorphous war down here in Mzantsi. We are just about half Way into the middle of 2015, and the month I am onto this part is April 18th. And what I am about to write, is very hard, and I do not really have a way of approaching it, and dealing with it. So, I will cobble up my impressions as they concretize themselves in my mind.

Many-a-times when I come to such crossroads in our African history, I consult with the past Master Historians, for they seem to have anticipated such matters. I will look into Fanon's work, along with Wilson, Asa and John Hendrick Clarke-maybe some will be included along the way, but, for me, these Master Teachers are the ones that contributed a lot to my Academic growth and writings. Today, in South Africa, we Africans, have a real and serious problem. We are supposed to be responsible for all what we do, for we told the world that our society is now a Democracy, and we are going to be accountable for all what we do. We can no longer 'solely' blame Apartheid, but we have to take responsibilities for all what we do.

Ours is a young collection of huge numbers of African people's nations, not yet one unified nation of Mzantsi/Azania, along with other ethnicities here inside our country, and we are going to have to begin to learn what we are supposed to be all about. But later on for all that. What I want to talk about is the State of our national mind, as African people, and what we have become as a result of our mental state. I have written at length about the mental state of African people in other Hubs I have published here, the reader can check them out. Right now, I want to talk about what has happened to us during the past 20+ year of ANC Rule.

The Topic of this Hub has as its theme, the "Implosion of Mzantsi, and where are we going as a people… The murdering and killing of the Africans North Of Africa is a very serious thing. On one side, is the fact that the Nguni/Bakone people are on a murderous romp, and are venting their state of Apartheidized Mental Disorders, and also, they are trying to cope with a debilitating malgovernment and malfesceance by the current rulers of the country.

On the other hand, there are many Africans who crossed the border , few legally, and millions, illegally into South Africa, and now there is a competition for the meagre resources that the Africans of South Africa, en masse, have not had access to, and the use of this incoming labor by the Whites of South Africa-used as a buffer between the Economic controllers, and the poor Africa, are the people who have come from North Africa.

South African Africans, not owning and controlling the wealth of their own country, which is totally controlled by foreigners, are having to struggle and fight on one front, labor, and on the other hand, they have to contend with the many Africans and Asians that are taking over everything they have, and they are still in a stage and state of dependency, created by Apartheid, and exacerbated by the ANC.

The newly arrived Africans from North of Africa, found a very well-developed South Africa build on the backs and enslaved and Apartheidized African people of South Africa. Many, today, with the murderous romp of the Africans of South Africa, wail and complain that they have been mistreated by the Africans of South Africa. After many, have been here for more than two decades, married African South African women, many dumped them for their pursuit was for Citizenship; have become brazen and disrespectful of the indigenous South African Africans.

Many tell Africans, here in Mzantsi, to their faces that they are 'lazy', dumb'-and they, many of some of these Africans from the north of South Africa, are much smarter, more business-minded and progressive than the Africans here in Mzantsi; many have a total disregard and disrespect of the local Africans, and think less of them, and they, the Africans north of South Africa, as being superior. This is simple to verify, if many of all these talking heads and intellectuals, would do their own research amongst the Africans of South Africa.

Many tell the Africans here in South Africa that tSouth Africa is their country too. That they brought labor, skills, and are more better in many other economic or intellectual areas: where you find many of the children of the Africans from north of South Africa, in Universities such as UNISA, and so forth, that in the end, they look down upon the Africans of South Africa as being Stupid, Lazy, Unimaginative, and some go to the extent of telling the Africans of South Africa that they are going to take their land from them!

The killing of Africans from the north of South Africa is Wrong on many levels. But, also, this does not happen in a vacuum; it is not an aberration. There are many social interactive variables that come into play and thus, we begin to see an explosion of, and in fact, it is really an implosion of the society and various communities of Africans of Mzantsi under constant hammering and disfigurement of the whole nation of people, by its leaders, Africans from north of South Africa, and other foreign nationalities, who are leeching and sucking the emaciated cadaver that is what is left of the Africans of Mzantsi, post Apartheid, and now during the corrupt ANC Rule.

I am not going to write apologetics about what is happening in south Africa today, but I will cite facts as they unfolding and am unpacking them for a much more better understanding for future generations… A bit of Frantz Fanon would do for starters.

I contend that there are colonial mental disorders that have been wrought upon the Africans of South Africa, severely so, by Apartheid and exacerbated by the ANC. Fanon writes:

"We shall deal here with the problem of Mental Disorders born of the national War of liberation waged by the Algerian people. Perhaps the reader will find these noes on psychiatry out to place, and there's absolutely nothing we can do about that. We had no control over the fact that the psychiatric phenomena, the mental and behavioral disorders emerging from this War, have loomed so large among the perpetrators of "pacification" and the "pacified" population. The truth is that colonization, in its very essence, already appeared to be a great purveyor of psychiatric hospitals.

"Since 1954, we have drawn the attention of French and International psychiatrists in scientific works to the difficulty of "curing" a colonized subject correctly; in other words, making him/her thoroughly fit into a social environment of the colonial type."

Now, up to this far, we know that we have had to deal with raw Apartheid from 1948 to 1992, and all this time, no one was there to help us. Many of the selfsame Africans, north of South Africa, even though they were helping Africans from South Africa escape Apartheid into their countries, they fastened a tight noose on reigned them in camps, and were not even allowed to simply just venture out of those camps willy-nilly. We know that. We, those of us here in Mzantsi, know for a fact that they did so so's not to antagonize the Apartheid War machine, which occasionally made 'excursion' into their countries in pursuit of these very ANC camps, where the Boers would go on a murderous spree.

We know that many of the countries of the North of Africa collaborated with Apartheid on many levels, which they did as a matter of survival, but to the detriment of those of us suffering under the yoke of Apartheid. Our state of mental disorder has been conditioned a la Pavlovian conditioning to be colonial subjects, and no one, after the supposed Apartheid was removed, cared enough to see to it that the nation of Africans underwent an intensive and intense collective psychiatric healing which we still have not yet even recovered from today.

Many of our people complain that we were forced to accept the change that we witnessed when the ANC took power 21= years ago, and were forced to accept the world as it bore down onto us. We were never allowed, nor given a chance to, decry the indigenous of South Africa, as a people, to form a nation we call An African South African nation. Instead, we were given a bogus and fictive premise that we are now a "Rainbow Nation", which simply meant that we remain in our hovels and social positions, poor, ignorant, sick, and you name, and we should make pretend that we are now overnight, and internationalized "Rainbow Nation."

Meanwhile, we are experience and re-experiencing oppression, depression suppression and all kinds of social ailments and malaise, that nobody really cared, and everyone who came into the land, only saw money for themselves and their families and nations, and kicked us "off" onto the poverty curb; denigrading and degrading us; impregnating our women, whilst they protected their women, the Pakistanis, the /somalis, Nigerians, and many Africans North of Africa, and as I have pointed out above, begun to look down on Africans of South Africa. This has caused some of these present problems as we see culminating over the years. This is what needs to be addressed before we can begin to wax political or ideological.

The whole explosion/implosion is put into context by Fanon below:

"Because it is a systematized negation of the other, a frenzied determination to deny the other any attribute of humanity, colonialism forces the colonized to constantly ask the question: "Who am I in reality?"

The defensive positions born of this violent confrontation between the colonized and the colonial constitute a structure which then reveals the colonized personality. In order to understand this "sensibility" we need only to study and appreciate the scope and depth of the wounds inflicted on the colonized during a single day under a colonial regime. We must remember in any case, that a colonized people is not just a dominated people.

"Under the French occupation the Germans remained human beings. In Algeria, there is nothing else but a territory. The Algerians, the women dressed in 'haiks', the palm groves, and the camels form a landscape, the 'natural' backdrop for the French presence."

Same with South Africa,that soon after the ANC took power, the Africans of Mzantsi formed part of the 'mise-en-scene'-found in the specially prepared and designed 'village-like' enclaves in some resorts, performing to the tourists, their supposed-cultural schtick, and the elephants, and the beautiful scenery's along with us the indigene, are part of the territory, but not the owners of our own land and its resources-our fledgeling nation and its divided psyche about their national reality. Fanon further adds:

"A hostile, ungovernable, and fundamentally rebellious ' is in fact synonymous in the colonies with the Bus, the mosquitoes, the 'natives,' and diseases. Colonization has succeeded once this untamed 'Nature,' has been brought under control. Cutting railroads through the bush, draining swamps, and ignoring the political and economic existence of the 'native' population, are in fact one and the same thing."

The fact that all these achievements have been made possible in south Africa, modernizing it, and making millionaires of the ruling White elite who control the economy, was done, over and above all else, on the backs and lives of the Africans of South Africa. That, in the final analysis, when the ANC took power, African people were worse off for wear. We had been made the hewers of wood and gatherers of water, for others, in this land of our fore-fathers. When the ANC took over, they took aways, for the African, whatever modicum or semblance of power we were gathering and beginning to realize. Again, we, the Africans of South Africa, are at the bottom of the economic pile, and we are nowhere near taking control of our lands and our people-bodies, minds and souls. We read the following from Fanon:

When colonization remains unchallenged by armed resistance, when the sum of harmful stimulants exceeds a certain threshold, the colonized's defenses collapse, and many of them end up in psychiatric institutions. In the calm of this period of triumphant colonization, a constant and considerable stream of mental symptoms are direct sequels of this oppression."

Many of the people that come from countries north of South Africa, have already have had years of being 'flag' independent, and South Africa, under the yoke and leash of Imperialism and local White billionaires, is only 20+ years old. The time frame and gap that these new African colonies have had, has given them a head-start, and now they could not cope with the vicissitude of Imperial destabilization, because of their own corrupt leaders, are now flocking to Mzantsi in million.

What we will have to begin to talk about is the story and histories of these 'flag' independent African former colonies. Their African ruling elite was not worse-off nor better than the ANC and its corrupt rule, and that is why these countries could not develop, for if one reads Walter Rodney's Book, "How Europe Underdeveloped Africa," one can begin to understand why today, we have so many from these African countries, north of South Africa, flogging to South Africa. They are coming to South Africa because it is the best in Africa… There is no debating that fact. Also, it was built on the poor African people's lives and/backs and bodies from 1652 AD, and more-so, and intensely, from 1948 to date.

Writer Robert Fulford claimed that, "it was Fanon who brought into modern culture the idea that violence can heal the spiritually wounded," and that Fanon "argued that violence was necessary to Third World peoples not just as a way to win their liberty but, even more, because it would cure the inferiority complex that had been created by the teachings of white men."

In a chapter of The Wretched of the Earth entitled "Colonial War and Mental Disorders," Fanon describes a series of clinical cases. One involved two Algerian brothers who had murdered their European friend. They had both lost family members at the hands of the French and appear to have killed the friend simply because he himself was French. Naturally, Fanon did not condone the arbitrary killing by the brothers. But as a psychiatrist, he sought to understand why they did it. He concluded that, like so many of his other patients, the brothers were afflicted with "psychiatric phenomena entailing disorders" that were directly linked to their colonial condition. In other words, random violence was not normal behavior. Fanon did not prescribe violence. He diagnosed it and sought to explain it.

He cringed at wanton acts of violence and, despite his medical training, is said to have had a strong aversion to the sight of blood. And yet he could not ignore Algeria's reality, or that of any other society where the colonizer used violence to subvert and repress the life chances of those they colonized. It is puzzling how such a common feature of colonial society has been so controversial. Violence and colonialism go hand-in-hand. Violence is not only used to subjugate colonized peoples; it conditions their very existence because it is held in reserve, for when the "the natives get out of hand."(David Austin)

We have lived and are still living this type of violence and other methods of violence to this day in south Africa. As we struggle to wrap our minds and brains at our decrepit condition, we can hardly recover from the present state of corruption and deviousness of our own, supposedly elected government.

But there is another reason to carefully read Fanon. Most of the violence that Fanon describes in The Wretched of the Earth is fratricidal - Algerians unleashing their pent-up anguish and frustration upon one another, largely because they feel powerless to lash out against their oppressor. At a time when "black-on-black" violence routinely dominates the headlines (does "white-on-white" crime exist)?, Fanon reminds us that alienation, poverty, and marginalization are responsible for many of the social and psychological ills of our time. And while it might be too formulaic to ascribe a simple cause-effect relationship to all social problems, there is no doubt that the fratricide that continues to clip so many lives in North America and Europe is directly related to high unemployment, diminished life chances, and the profound sense of social estrangement so many young people feel.(David Austin)

Fulford believes that Fanon "has receded into history," but this point could not be further from the truth. Fanon continues to resonate with the oppressed and dispossessed of the world. He has been the subject of at least two films, with another one soon to be released by Danny Glover's company, Louverture Films. His ideas are studied in departments of philosophy and political science, and in post-colonial and cultural studies programs, all over the world. His influence in the field of psychiatry and psychology is growing, and a steady flow of Fanon biographies and anthologies suggests that, despite the tremendous impact of his writing in the 1960s and 1970s, we are only now beginning to understand the breadth and depth of his ideas.

When Fulford suggested that Fanon's ideas stubbornly evade death, he is right. Like a festering wound that refuses to heal, the inequalities that Fanon so vividly denounced are still with us today. Like Lennie, who played his part in wiping the fog from our eyes, the ghost of Fanon continues to haunt us, not as a spooky apparition but as one who challenges us to imagine that another world is possible, and to concretely commit ourselves to bringing that world into being.(David Austin)

The problem in Mzantsi, today, is that, the post Apartheid African society, has yet to come around and begin to create and develop a new society and human being, but so long as we have quislings of the like of the ANC, this is not going to happen, nor is it going to be a possibility.

Bobby Seals writes:

Frantz Fanon saw this Francization process as a brainwashing tactical contrivance to turn the Afro-Martinican into a Frenchified subject in relation to every aspect of life (i.e., culture,language, education, history, legacy, etc.). Education in Martinique was — and is — an induction into linguistic and cultural schizophrenia.6Quintessentially, Fanon knew from first-hand experiences how devastating, destructive and crippling racism, colonialism and assimilation can have on the psyche of the colonized.

'Majority chose to assimilate, but irrespectively some chose to resist. Fanon chose the latter. Conversely, after a happy childhood in Martinique, a young Fanon enlisted in the World War II fight to defend the freedom of Europeans persecuted by Nazism in the name of racial supremacy; after coming home to the Antilles, he returned to France to pursue his education, studying psychiatry in Lyon.

His experience in France as a Black man and as an intellectual exposed him to racism, but however, he was also exposed to the elements of ethnology, phenomenology, and Marxism, but existentialism and psychoanalysis took top billing.

This treatise is therefore an attempt to explain Frantz Fanon’s relationship to alienation and how he planned to transform the world into a more conscious, liberating, and respectful home. His genealogical and archaeological methodologies used to excavated analyze the immorality, malevolence, and monstrosity of alienation came to be a revolutionary conceptual thought process that would help in the battle against systemic racism within the realm of colonialism, colonization and European imperialism

In other words, Fanon wants the European colonizer, the European elite, to see his complicity in systemic violence inflicted upon the colonized.

Fanon gave a new fixity to alienation. L. Adele Jinadu points out that to a certain extent, “Psychological violence then becomes a form of cultural imperialism the context of the colonial situation…its victim is an alienated person, in the strong Marxian sense of man becoming a stranger to himself.”

In a similar disposition, the alienation of the native may take the form of assimilation, the loss of cultural identity or its disruption, through which the social group imitate the oppressor.16Within this context,Fanon writes:The oppressor, through the inclusive and frightening character of his authority,manages to impose on the native new ways of seeing, and in particular, a pejorative judgment with respect to his original forms of existing/[being].

In other words, as succinctly stated by Jean-Paul Sartre, “Oppression means, first of all,the oppressor’s hatred for the oppressed.” Marx wrote on alienation in a similar way portraying it as a self-fulfilling prophecy, which is fraught with violence and dehumanization. In a similar vein, Fanon urged that alienated people recover their material and spiritual losses through violence…in many ways this is exactly what happened in Algeria."

Bobby Seals then touches upon the most crucial point that I am trying to address, by paraphrasing Fanon below:

Fanon’s own traumatic experiential encounter of racial difference, illustrated so symbolically in Black Skin, White Masks through his reaction to being called ‘A Negro!’ and his ensuing impossible attempts at defense,emblematizes the trauma of colonialism for himself but also for other colonized peoples:the shock of the meeting of cultures, the shock of encountering the always — already derogatory meaning pre-existing for the black man from whatever culture.The salient point is that colonial experiences can be a traumatic reality to cope with, especially in the Fanon’s case of having, merely, to spend his entire life engulfed in a paradoxical world of alienation, racial discrimination, and psychological manipulation.

E. Ann Kaplan affirms that, “Seeing Fanon through the lens of trauma, rather than that of fantasy or repression, helps us understand more about both the phenomena of trauma and about what are often seen as Fanon’s conflicting poles — the psychiatrist and the revolutionary. In other words, these traumatic encounters prompted or incentivize Fanon wanting and yearning for transformative socio-political and institutional change for the colonized. Moreover,through Fanon’s scrutinizing trajectory, the ultimate incentive was envisioning freedom and self-determination for the alienated and victimized “other."

In a similar vein, Fanon states with indomitable passion: "So, comrades, let us not pay tribute to Europe by creating states, institutions and societies, which draw their inspiration from her. Humanity is waiting for something other from us than such an 'imitation,' which would be almost an obscene caricature. If we want to turn Africa into a new Europe, and America into a new Europe, then let us leave the destiny of our countries to Europeans…But if we want humanity to advance a step further, if we want to bring it up to a different level than that which Europe has shown it, then we must invent and we must make discoveries. If we wish to live up to our peoples’ expectations, we must seek the response elsewhere than in Europe."

"One’s freedom, with this view, is incomplete if one does not consciously or deliberately act to make good the opportunities and possibilities open to one.”

In decolonization there is therefore the need of a complete calling in question of the colonial situation. If we wish to describe if precisely, we might find it in the well-known words: “The last shall be the first and the first last.” Decolonization is the putting into practice of this sentence. That is why, if we try to describe it,all decolonization is successful.

Fanon goes on to add with strong conviction:

"A history which will have regard to the sometimes prodigious theses whichEurope has put forward, but which will also not forget Europe’s crimes, of which the most horrible was committed in the heart of man, and consisted of the pathological tearing apart of his functions and the crumbling away of his unity. And in the framework of the collectivity there were differentiations, the stratification and the blood thirsty tensions fed by classes; and finally, on the immense scale of humanity, there were racial hatreds, slavery, exploitation and above all the bloodless genocide which consisted in the setting aside of fifteen thousand millions of men.

About this part of originating all things for ourselves, Fanon tackles, just a bit, the conundrum we face as a people of African descent:

Moreover, Fanon’s anti-imperialist ideology posed a monolithic threat and danger to the survivability of this permeating universalized omnipresence of Eurocentricity. Fanon needed to be silenced. In that respect, Fanon was a marked man. Due to his ideological and epistemological beliefs of demonizing European colonial legitimacy and their “Manifest Destiny”approach, Fanon was labeled as an atheist.

Michael Lackey writes that, “The writings of Frantz Fanon, the French-Martoinican psychiatrist and political revolutionary, for he brilliantly exposes how the God concept has been strategically deployed to create a whole race of people as the "wretched of the earth.” In other words, Fanon's theoretical perspective stems from his personal and professional analysis in France, Algeria, and Martinique and amongst the African Americans in the United States.

He believed that the use of the dominant religion, Christianity, has kept the “wretched of the earth” in a state of stagnation, making them believe that, “God” will free them (i.e., only when they are deceased) from the oppressive and pervasive forces perpetuated by European domination.

Fanon also emphasized that freedom has nothing to do with “any supernatural power” therefore it is solemnly up to the colonized to free themselves from this socially and politically constructed oppressive paradigm. Lackey also points out that Fanon explicitly captures his readers’ attention to the chosen people discourse: The Church in the colonies is the white people’s church, the foreigner’s church. She does not call the native to God’s way but to the way of the white man, of the master, of the oppressor.

"And as we know, in this matter many are called but few chosen.” In other words, the “white” church operates in a similar apparatus in relation to colonialism and colonization as they are intended to destroy every aspect of the subaltern’s culture, language and historical legacies; and replace it with the colonizer’s culture, language and historical legacies. Fanon was characterized with innumerable epithets, some positive and some negative; however, principally he was delineated as a “Revolutionary Humanist.”

According to Richard C.Onwuanibe, revolutionary humanism is:

"Essentially a human praxis whereby authentic human order and values are initially forged. It restores the imbalance of one race or people dominating another. Specifically, it is a criticism of the White world interiorizing and exploiting the Black world, of the European settlers in Algeria dominating the Moslems, slave labor being used for the aggrandizement of Europe. It is a practical way of rectifying the injustices perpetuated in the relationship of the colonial powers of the West and the Third World.

In order to comprehensively understand this socialization process of alienation, it must be demonstratively deconstructed. Frantz Fanon’s deconstructive process of alienation helped me understand, in a transformative way, the destructive power of alienation. Alienation forces the“other”to yearn for whiteness because that is what is at the apex, looking down upon the subaltern.

In that sense, the main purport of Fanon’s objectivity centered on awakening or invoking the“power within”the populace themselves of the understandability to work toward self-determination, self-worth, and non-Eurocentric truths. It is significant to note here the authenticity of Frantz Fanon’s humanistic essence that transformed him into a revolutionary humanist. Fanon asserted strongly, unrestrictedly and publicly to the world that European colonialism and European colonization were both unjust acts against humanity; therefore were unethical, immoral and nefarious traditional modes of operations that were destroying the humanity, livelihood, and cultural legacies of Third World nations.

Broken And Dysfunctional Country: Mzantsi's Conundrum

Culture As A Weapon Of Resuscitating Our Fledgling Struggle In South Africa

Weapon On A Cultural Tip and Trip And Tip...

What Could Be And Should Be Done...

Wilson writes: "Under certain social-economic circumstances, cultural identity can become an instrument for the expression of power of the predominant cultural system which molded it, and may also become the instrument used by the dominant culture and its members to further its survival and enhance its empowerment.

Black-African) cultural identity, even in its stratified and diffused state, even on the individual level, is a political economy or essentially an organization of lacks, deficiencies, interests, needs, desires, passions tastes, ideals, motives, values, etc., the response to which on the part of Blacks helps to maintain or enhance the social power relations, prerogatives, and integrity of the White dominated racial status quo.

The salvation, empowerment and liberation of African peoples require an appropriate, thorough, pragmatic cultural analysis of the deculturation and reculturation of ourselves by dominant European peoples, of reactionary "Black culture," and their social products as represented by reactionary Black identities. We must analyze how these identities, whether considered prosocial or antisocial, function to maintain the oppressive power of Whites and the subordinate powerlessness of black.

Our salvation requires that we perceive White supremacy as the major social, political, and spiritual problem to be resolved by African peoples, and that we ask and answer definitively the questions: What kind of a culture must we construct in order to overthrow White supremacy? What kinds of social identities, relations, arrangements, alignments, institutions, values, etc., which when actualized, will allow us to attain and protect our liberty? Enhance our quality of life? What kinds of socialization practices must we institute in order to empower ourselves to become the kinds of people we must become if we are to secure our right to be free?

Certainly, the answers lie in the direction of the reclamation of our African identity and the reconstitution of our African-centered consciousness supported by commensurate African-centered cultural, social, political and economic values, institutions and relations. It is very important to keep in mind that a culture is to a significant extent a historical product, a social product; a culture is socially manufactured, the handiwork of both deliberate and coincidental human social collusions and interactions.

A culture also manufactures social products, and some of the most important social products it generates include its own cultural identity, and the social and personal identities of its constituent group and individual members." Africans must confidently build and recreate their own culture from the remnants of the culture that they have today. There is a motivation for such actions that need to be carried out by Africans of South Africa to begin to rebuild their people who are steeped in dysfunction and confusion…

Cabral On Unity And Struggle

We need to begin reassessing and reevaluating our present decrepit reality that it is really cause by lack of cohesive reality and people committed to the Struggle. Our problems now In South Africa is that we are all in a hurry to get rich 'quickly' and forgetting our total enclave, collective and entity as mattering, and sacrificing that for Western Individualism and Money. Want and lack/chase and pursuit of Money is disabling and also dismantling any efforts towards Unity and a Conscience consciousness for the struggle we face.

Right now, today in Mzantsi, we are in 'real' trouble: Serious one for that matter. We talk a lot and are saying nothing. We use so many words, but these are just for show. We have no action, except that which enhances our projects and aims. As talking real and concerted intense struggle, that is not the concern or will that one can cull from our African intelligentsia here in Mzantsi. We do not even bother to read such pieces as I am about to post, and many of us who holler from the rooftops about Unity and Struggle, are doing it for 'show' and pretending that there is something going on. But as to what that entails-what this means for and to the man-in-the-street, few are talking with a straight mouth-about how to achieve Unity and continue the struggle-without confusing the masses-instead they are doing so from both sides of the mouth-saying nothing definitive.

Cabral Below writes:

"What is Unity" We can clearly take unity in a sense which one might call static, at a standstill, as no more than a question of number. For example, if we consider the entirety of bottles in the world, one bottle is a Unity. If we consider the entirety of men in this walk[Bra Pule-my choice of name here], is a Unity. And so on. Is this the Unity that we are interested in considering in our work when we speak of our "Organizational" structures? It is and it is not. It is to the extent we want to transform a varied entirety of person into a well defined entirety seeking one path. And it is not because here we must not forget that within this entirety there are diverse elements. Rather the meaning of Unity that we see in our principles is the following: whatever might be the existing differences, we must be one, to achieve a given aim. This means that in our principle, Unity is taken in a dynamic sense, in motion.

"Let us consider, for example, a football team, which is made up of various individuals, eleven persons. Each person has his specific work to do when the football team is playing. The persons differ from each other: different temperaments; often different education, some cannot even read or write, others are doctors, engineers; different religion, one might be Moslem, and other catholic, some, animists, etc. They may even act differently on the political plane, one might be for the Organization, another for another different [Organization].

"One might be for the status quo, in Portugal for example, another might be for the opposition. That is, persons different fro each other, each one feeling different from the other. But in the same football team. Each one can preserve his personality,h his ideas, his religion, his personal thoughts, even a little style of play, but they must all obey one thing: they must act together to score goals against any opponent with whom they are playing, that is, act around this specific aim to scoring the maximum number of goals against the opponent. They have to form a Unity. If they do not do this, there is not football team, there is nothing. That is to show you a clear example of Unity.

"So that, what is the question of Unity in our weLand? Fundamentally it was simply this: in the first place, as everyone knows, Union makes for strength. Right from the moment when there came into the heads of some Sons of our soil the idea of eliminating foreign colonialist domination, there arose a question of strength, the strength necessary to be pitted against the strength of colonialists. So, the more persons who join together, the more United we become, the better we reflect what everyone knows: Union makes for strength. If I take one matchsticks and want to break it, I can break it quickly.

"If I take two together, it is no longer quite so easy, and then three or four, five, five six, a given moment will come when I cannot break them at all. This is a simple, natural illustration that Union makes for Strength (and we must realize that Union does not always make for strength, there are certain kinds of Union which makes for weakness — and this is the wonder of the world: all things have two aspects, one positive and the other negative). Those who had the idea of Unity, because Union makes for Strength, put the question of Unity into the spirit and letter of our Struggle, because they knew that there was much division in our midst.

"So, we see that Unity is something we have to achieve in order to be able to do something else. I f we are going to wash, for example, either by turning on a tap or washing ourselves in the river, unless we are crazy, we are not going into the water without undressing; we must first take off our clothes. It is an action we carry out, a preparation so that we can take a bath.

"Better still: if we want to hold a meeting in this hall, with persons seated, we must call them, set up tables, arrange pencil and pens, etc. That is, we have to arrange means to be able to hold a meeting as it should be. Unity is also a means, not an end. We might haveStruggled a little for Unity, but if we achieve it, that does not mean that the struggle is over. There are many persons in this Struggle of the colonies against colonialism , who up to till now, are still Struggling merely for Unity. Because, was they are unable to wage the Struggle, they confuse Unity with Struggle.

"Unity is a means towards Struggle, and as with all means, a little goes a long way. It is not necessary to Unite "All" the Population to Struggle in a Country. Are we sure that, "All" the Population are United? No, a certain degree of Unity is enough. Once we have reached it, then we can Struggle. Because then the ideas in the heads of these persons advance and develop and serve increasingly to achieve the aim we have in view. So, you have seen more or less what is the basic idea expressed in this principle of ours - Unity.

And what is Struggle? Struggle is a normal condition of all living creatures in the world. All are in Struggle, All Struggle. Now, taken together, Unity and Struggle means that for the Struggle, Unity is necessary, but to have Unity, it is also necessary to Struggle. And this means that even among ourselves, we are sStruggling; perhaps, you have not understood this property. The significance of our Struggle is not only in respect of colonialism, it is also in respect of ourselves: Unity and Struggle. Unity is for us to Struggle against the colonialists and Struggle for us to achieve our Unity, for Us to Construct Our Land as it 'should be.'

To Start Out From The Reality Of Our Land

The topic above is a sub-title by Cabral, wherein he writes:

The Reality:

"Another question we can proceed to discuss is the following principle of our Organization:

"We advance tiers the Struggle secure in the Reality of our Land (with our fee planted on the Ground).

"This means, as we see it, that it is impossible to wage a Struggle under our conditions, it is impossible to struggle effectively for the independence of a people, it is impossible to establish effective Armed Struggle such as we have to establish in our land, unless we really know our Reality and unless we Really start out from that Reality to wage the Struggle.

What Is Our Reality?

"Our reality, like all other realities, has positive aspects and negative aspects, has strengths and weaknesses

"Wherever our head might be, our feet are planted on the ground of our Land[in south Africa], in the specific Reality of our Land. This is the Key factor that can guide the work of our Organization.

"There are those in the world who take the view that Reality depends on the way in which man interprets it. For such, Reality - things seen, touched, felt, they wound around each human being — are the consequence of what Man has in his head. There are other who take the view that Reality exists and that Man forms that part of Reality. It is not what he has in his head that defines Reality, but Reality itself that defines Man. Man is part of a Reality, man is within Reality and it is not what he has in his head that defines Reality. On the contrary, Reality itself under which Man lives is what defines the things Man has in his head.

"A very important aspect of a National Liberation Struggle is that those who lead the Struggle must never confuse what they have in their head with Reality. On the contrary, anyone who leads a National Liberation Struggle must have many things in his head, and more each day (from the starting point of the particular Reality of his Land, and of the Reality of other Lands), but he must weigh up and make plans which respect the Reality and not what he has in his head. This is very Important! Failure to respect it has created many difficulties in the Peoples' Liberation Struggle, mainly in Africa!

"I may have my own opinion on various matters, on the way to organize the Struggle, to form and Organization - an Opinion I formed, for example, in Europe, in Asia, or even perhaps in other African countries, from books and documents I have read, or because someone who influenced me. But, I cannot presume to form and Organization, to organize a Struggle, in accordance with what I have in my head. It must be in accordance with the specific reality of the Land!

"We must consider that we were learning how to wage Struggle in step as we were advancing (In the path). The Struggle on that coastline of our land is one thing: among the Mamjaco it is another; in Oio it has to be different again. There are many differences. Take for example the Mandinga elders, we have to understand the way to deal with them, not the same way as we treat the Balanta elders. But in Gabe, we had to wage the Struggle in a completely different way. If we compare the Struggle in game with the Struggle in the South of our Land, they are two Struggles as if it were a matter of two lands.

"Realism is essential, to consider the specific Reality. Even in respect of certain things which are gradually advancing. At the start, the men did not want meeting with women. We did not force the pace, while some areas women soon came to the meetings without difficulties. We must be aware of Reality, not only of the general Reality of our Land, but also of the particular Realities of every thing, so as to be able to guide the Struggle correctly.

"It is only the responsible officials or leaders who take this sense of Reality into consideration (who do not think that truth is what they have in their head, but that truth is what is outside their head), who can properly guide their work as militants, as responsible officials, in a Struggle like ours. Unhappily, we must acknowledge that many of our people have taken on responsibilities in this Struggle without considering this factor, although we have always spoken about it.

"But Reality never exists in isolation. For example, [Bra Sipho] is nothing; is a Reality, is a real fact. But he cannot. But he cannot exist alone, he alone is Reality we consider in the wold or in life, however great or small, it always forms part of another Reality, is integrated in another Reality, is affected by other Realities, which in turn have an effect in or on other realities. So our Land of [Mzantsi as a whole], and our Struggle, form part of a greater Reality that is affected by the effects other Realities in the world.

"For example, if we consider the Reality of Mzantsi, is a greater Reality. But the Reality of Mzantsi is within the greater Reality of Africa, with five or six neighbors, We can link a little wider, with our various neighbors first, then Africa, and with the reality of the whole Africa and the African Diaspora[my insertions], and with the Reality of the whole world, although there might be other Realities between these.

"This means that our own Reality([particularly here in Mzantsi, is at the center of a complex Reality, but it is the [Mzantsi] Reality that concerns us here. For others it would be the same, it would be at some other focus, and their would be the central reality. But, even if we think ours at the center, our reality is not isolated, is not on its own. In many things we have to do, we have first to realize that we are integrated with other Realities. This is very important for us not to make mistakes."

Then, there is this mistake we make, today here in South Africa to which Cabral addresses as follows:

To such an extent that we can find, for example, members in a given area who know that the members in another area do not have any ammunition and are not able to mobilize their folk to deliver ammunition. This shows our failure of awareness in seeing our own Reality, and how we are integrated in a Greater Reality, that we ourselves have created, but not yet fully absorbed into our awareness."

Writing this piece, I have replaced in many places the 'Cape Verde' names with Mzantsi, so's to tailor the article for us. Many of us are saying the past is irrelevant to our present struggle. Well, then, how do you carry out the Struggle if you do not know whence it originates from? Many of us are lazy to read, learn, and begin to immerse ourselves with the Greater reality, and our own peculiar Reality here at home.

Many think that the Struggle inside of South Africa today is intrinsic and special to us only, here in Mzantsi. We are 'isolating' our Struggle and trying to own it as if it's unique to us only, and yet do not know, nor understand and neither can we execute it at all, because we barely even understand what we are faced with here-and-now. But we are not really working towards the liberation of our people, at all.

Wee are dysfunctional because the historicity of our own Struggle is what many of us do not even know, or read about, nor able to cull from our day-to-day interaction with our people. Many of us hardly even interact or immerse ourselves with the ordinary people in the Struggle, for we are very comfortable with the Facebook hollering, of which some of us are 'very good' at, but in the face to face, in intelligence gathering about our own Struggle and people, in attending Township meetings and talking daily to the poor folks, we are absent; many of us neither know nor do what I am talking about. And yet, you hear a lot of shouts and carrying-on about UNITY and Struggle here on Facebook.

But, as to the daily Struggles that our people are engaged-in, writing about it and being in it and seeing and putting it into context for our people, to have access to[of which we know not all are online] we do not make efforts to that end. We have become Social Network s Revolutionary, and saying nothing to each other. Unity, as explained and broke-down by Cabral above, is not within our own purview.

Some of us think the Struggle is being on Facebook and saying 'sweet-nothing's'. Many of us have no concept or idea what the Reality of the Struggle is all about. When it comes to land issues, every Johnny-come-lately[bo-Mafikizolo] in our midst do not have the necessary theoretical acumen to become the Best Sons And Daughters of Our Land To lead The Struggle. The writings of Cabral are not what many know, read or bother to find out more about.

Instead, what we hear is that the 'past is not the present'? What a convoluted way of looking at and understnding our Strugggle. There are many different people that in the Struggle. This point is made clear by Cabral above, but the objective is not the personalities, or likes, or positions of, or knowledge in the heads of these people, but one goal of executing the struggle and take out those who keep our people in perpetual bondage.

There is not much that Facebook will do for us if we do not even posit some in-depth information that will go a long way towards making many people begin to learn and read about the Story/Past history of our Struggle, our Land, Our Reality, and overall understanding of the depth and breadth of our Struggle in South Africa, Africa, the Diaspora and the World.

So long as many of us are averse and anti-reading and push-against writing and learning more about our Struggles and its other related issues, we are just huffing and puffing here on Facebook. that is why I believe in posting such long articles, because our Struggle is not in the mode and form of a McDonald's Burger; our Struggle will not go anywhere as long as we prefer short-cuts to learning as affected by the nature of the Social media.

Our Struggle is not the Social Media or the Internet, but these are and should be the means through which we can push it along, but not imagine that we can make a successful Struggle on the Facebook pages, and believe that nothing else matters. Our People, who are Poor, Falling Behind in everything, Sick, Unemployed, lacking basic services, being ignored by their government and African rulers, Do Matter!

As Amilcar Cabral say elsewhere, the Struggle is for the People, by the People, and of the People, and that, it seems, today, the Struggle is for the FB users, by the FB users by the FB Users. Our people are struggling to stay or be Online in a way where we can all have a very solid and successful discussion about the nature of our Struggle and what should be done(a la Lenin). It is important to hold some discussion also about what Lenin said Should be Done, we cannot use all what Lenin says, but we can improve our information-starved Struggle by using such approaches. Our Struggle is not about only reading, and listening to others about their own struggles, but it is also about how we understand, learn, know, and apply/immerse ourselves into our own Real Struggle.

We need to know more, also about the Bill of Rights, not only her on FB, but our people should be given that know how about their Bill of Rights, for starters. We have to implant the culture of reading and knowing that was our modus operandi when we were in the 1976 Student's revolution. The Struggle is not the purview, only, of "Friends" on Facebook, but of and by the people of South Africa who are the ones that are suffering and censored, shut down, ignored, and not listened to by many of us.

As Cabral says above, the above is not the one in our heads, no matter how it got there, and it really does not matter where one has learned about and thought about the Struggle, it is not the one in our heads. The Struggle is out there, outside the Internet, Web, Social Media, Twitter's Facebook's and the like, that we many of us here imagine it to be.

Right now, today, we are wasting time on what I call political frivolities and nonsense whilst the day-to-day lives of the Poor Africans are in shambles, our decrepit and dysfunctional lives of the poor are worsened by a Dumb intelligentsia, which is self-assured, falsely, so, in itself and about itself, and are seriously ignorant of the suffering and the ways and means as to how to ameliorate and right these injustices against our poor African people. We can all wax political as much as we like, but we are irrelevant if that's all what it is,and what we take from the FB post are just crass entertainment vignettes of no particular origin and designed to confused and misinform us as to our Reality and goal that we need to achieve to push our Struggle forward. We need to talk Sharp With One Another. Whether people like what I am saying here or not, I am non-plussed. The Truth Shall Set Us Free.

Struggle And Unity And Our Reality, is all what we should know, act upon and achieve for our own suffering African people here in Mzantsi(South Africa)

Thomas Sankara - Africa's Youngest President

Leadership And Nation Building According To Sankara

By Revisiting Sankara's musings and postulation about Volta, it's like Us here in Mzantsi looking at Ourselves in a Mirror provided by Sankara and seeing ourselves in what he is describing. This is very important that we begin to talk about issues that affect us tremendously, than waxing political and saying nothing in the process.

Reading up on Sankara below, is a lesson about Mzatnsi, foreseen and foretold by Sankara as no one else would. The least thing most of us can do is to Read what Sankara has to say, than just try and regurgitate some maxims of four or five sennteces he has uttered. This is very important, for in his speech, we see Mzantsi with is clothes taken off-meaning, we cannot escape the truth and reality that Sankara is talking about below, and reading it will help us begin to put things into a very needed and essential African-centered perspective, so sorely needed in Mzantsi today.

This whole charade has been going on for the past 20 years. The promises that have been made in the past elections are hammered into the peoples hearts and minds. Right now, as they knew it would be, they are going to vote and give ANC four-more-plus year to try and rule

The elections are finally here, and many people say, "Mmmm, you wait and see when people have to make their own decisions about who to vote for-I tell you, they are going to vote ANC, hands down… You ask why? Well, what else is there in this cesspool — (said in blip-able Kasi/Township slang)… "Squat!" "Vokol!"(Nothing!)

I have been posting articles to try and present an alternative input and point of view into the talking points about the elections in Mzantsi. In this issue, I will go cull from what Sankara reminds us about our own situation, today-which is very eerie and spot on about our own present situation of 20 years of neocolonial rule; Sankara was summing up the past neocolonial rule in his country"

"Sankara":

"The task of constructing a new society cleansed of all ills that keep our country in a state of poverty and economic and cultural backwardness, will be long and Hard. ... The decision by French colonial imperialism to cut its losses was a victory for our people over the forces of foreign oppression and exploitation. From the masses' point of view, it was democratic reform, while from that of imperialism, it was a change in the forms of domination and exploitation of our people.

"This change nevertheless resulted in a realignment of classes and social layers and the formation of new classes. In alliance with the backward forces or traditional society, and in total contempt of the masses, whom they had used as a springboard to power, the "petty-bourgeoisie intelligentsia" of that time set about laying the political and economic foundations for new forms of imperialist domination and exploitation.

"Fear that the struggle of the popular masses would become more radical and lead to a genuine revolutionary solution was the basis for the choice made by imperialism. Henceforth, it would maintain its stranglehold over our country and perpetuate the exploitation of our people through "national intermediaries." The entire process of organizing neocolonial society would be nothing more than a simple operation of substituting one form for another.

"In Essence, neocolonial society and colonial society differed not at all. The colonial administration was replaced by a "neocolonial administration" identical to it in every respect-[The ANC]. The colonial army was replaced by a neocolonial army with the same characteristics, the same functions, and the same role of safeguarding the interests of imperialism and its colonial allies.[Here's Looking At South Africa After Apartheid]

"The colonial school system was replaced by neocolonial schools, which pursued the same goals of alienating our children from our country and reproducing a society that would primarily serve the interests of imperialism and secondarily, those of its local lackeys and allies.With the Support and blessing of imperialism, Voltaic(Mzantsi) nationals set about organizing the systematic plunder of our country.

"With the crumbs of this pillage that fell to them, they were transformed, little by little, into a truly parasitic bourgeoisie that could no longer control its voracious appetite. Driven solely by personal interest, they no longer hesitated at even the most dishonest means, engaging in massive corruption, embezzlement of public funds and properties,influence-peddling and real estate speculation, and practicing favoritism and nepotism.

"This is what accounts for all the material and financial wealth they accumulated from the sweat of the toilers. Not content to live-off the fabulous incomes derived from the shameless exploitation of their ill-begotten wealth, they fought tooth and nail to capture their political posts that would allow them to use the state apparatus to further their exploitation ad underhanded dealings

"Hardly a year passed without them treating themselves to extravagant vacations abroad. Their children deserted the country's schools for prestigious educations in other countries(Or special private prestigious schools in the country-as in our case in South Africa)… "All the resources of the state were mobilized to guarantee them, at the slightest illness, expensive care in luxury hospitals in foreign countries(and grand hospitals/expensive exclusive health care here in Mzantsi).

"All this has unfolded in full view of the honest,courageous, and hardworking Voltaic(Mzantsi) people, a people mired nonetheless in the most squalid misery. White Upper Volta(Big Cities of South Africa) are a paradise for the wealthy minority, it is a barely tolerable hell for the majority, the People.

"A part of this big majority, the wage earner, despite the fact that they are assured a regular income, suffer the constraints and pitfalls of capitalist consumer society. Their income is completely consumed before they have even touched it.

"This vicious cycle goes on and on, with no perspective of being broken."Through their respective trade unions, the wage earners engage in struggles to improve their living conditions(Marikana, for one). Sometimes the scope of those struggles forces concessions from the neocolonial authorities. But they simply give with one hand what they take back with the other.

"Thus a 10 percent wage increase is announced with great fanfare, only to be immediately taxed, wiping out the expected beneficial effects of the first measure. After five, six, or seven months, the workers finally understand the swindle and mobilize for new struggles. Seven months is more than enough for the reactionaries in power to catch their breadth and devise new schemes. Thus, in this endless fight, the worker always comes out the loser.

"The peasants, the 'wretched of the earth,' are also a component of this big majority. These peasants are expropriated, robbed, molested, imprisoned, ridiculed, and humiliated everyday, yet they are the ones whose labor creates wealth. The country's economy stays afloat despite its weakness, thanks to their productive labor. It is from this labor that the elite that the Gauteng's, Cape Townians are their Eldorado, and this sweetens their lives(just adjusted/added terms/names here)

"Yet, it is the peasants who suffer most from the lack of buildings, roads, health facilities, and services. These peasants,c creators of national wealth, are the ones who suffer the most from lack of schools an educational material(Lost books of Limpopo), for their children.

"It is their children who will swell the ranks of the unemployed after a brief stint in classrooms poorly adapted to the realities of this country. It is among the peasants that the illiteracy rate is highest - 98 percent. Those who most need to learn, so that the output of their productive labor can increase, are the very ones who benefit the least from expenditures for health care, education, and technology."The peasant youth — who have the same attitudes as all youth, greater sensitivity to social injustice, and greater desire for progress — finally leave the country-side in revolt, thus depriving it of its most dynamic elements.

"Their initial impulse drives these youth to the large urban centers(Name All The Big cities In Mzantsi). There they hope to find better-paying jobs and to benefit from the advantages of progress.The lack of jobs pushes them to idleness, with all its characteristic vices. Finally, so as not to end up in prison, they seek salvation by going abroad(Local African cities)… where the most shameless humiliation and exploitation await them. But does Voltaic(Mzantsi) society leave them any choice?

"Stated succinctly, this is the situation in our country after twenty-three years of neocolonialism: a paradise for some and hell for the rest…" [Note! That's Mzantsi.. Period!]

By The Way, When Was This Written Or Spoken? It was Written And Spoken On October 2, 1983, presented by Sankara on behalf of the National Council of the Revolution in a national radio and television broadcast…

So It is Here in Mzantsi(South Africa). All What Sankara said above, is what we are — it is sort of like 'looking into the mirror and seeing oneself staring back at you'. I could not have said it better than the great President, Sankara. Everything he just said, is all taking place in our country, and has been happening for the past 20 years. I think it is about time we learned from Sankara that we are not unique in Africa with our Shamocracy/Democrazy… Many countries have gone through these shenanigans from their neocolonial rulers(in our case,today, with the ANC).

Reading Sankara, will help us realize as to what is happening and what is really wrong with the way we see and do things. What I am saying is, in preparation for the coming elections, four years from now, we need to learn and act in different ways. For me, closing this whole hullaballoo about voting, I have decided to post the thoughts and experiences of Sankara, to be my keynote speaker as we are headed to the conclusion of voting. It is looking beyond that that I utilize Sankara, so that, if anyone four years from now can read this article, and identify all the things Sankara said in 1983, in 2018 or so, it means then we will have had one extra year from what Sankara has been 23 years of neocolonization, we will have learned nothing, and we will be repeating the same mistakes and so on, without no end.

My take of the election has been well-captured by Sankara above, and I aim to begin to learn from what he is said about Volta in 1983, to what is happening to us now in May, 2014… Let's all get to work, we have a lot of hard-work ahead...

Here's Looking At You...

Aphorisms:

"Leaders Who Plan For An African Future, But Consider Knowledge Of The Past Irrelevant, Can Only Be Presumed To Be Harboring The Colonialist View Of the African Past. It Was The Wisdom Of Our Fathers to Emphasize That Each Present Generation Owes Obligations And Responsibilities To Both the Ancestors And the Generations yet Unborn...-By J.F.A. Ajayi

Thomas Sankara, often referred to as “Africa’s Che Guevara” was the president of Burkina Faso from 1983 to 1987. He seized power in a 1983 popularly supported coup, with the goal of eliminating corruption and the dominance of the former French colonial power.

Sankara’s foreign policies were centered around anti-imperialism, with his government eschewing all foreign aid because, as he often said, “he who feeds you, controls you.” He pushed for debt reduction and nationalized all land and mineral wealth, averting the power and influence of the IMF and World Bank.

His domestic policies were focused on preventing famine with agrarian self-sufficiency and land reform, prioritizing education with a nation-wide literacy campaign, and promoting public health by vaccinating 2.5 million children. And his was the first African government to publicly recognize the AIDS epidemic as a major threat to Africa.

Thomas Sankara was an extraordinary man.- He outlawed female genital mutilation, forced marriages, and polygamy and was the first African leader to appoint women to major cabinet positions and actively recruit them for the military. A motorcyclist himself, he formed an all-woman motorcycle personal guard.- He encouraged women to work outside the home and stay in school even if pregnant.- He launched a nation-wide public health ‘Vaccination Commando’ a state run program that in a period of only 15 days in early November 1984, completed the immunization of 2.5 million children against meningitis (a world record), yellow fever and measles. This operation was so successful in that children in neighbouring countries like the Ivory Coast and Mali were sent to Burkina Faso for free immunization that helped curtail high rates of infant and child mortality.- He sold off the government fleet of Mercedes cars and made the Renault 5 (the cheapest car sold in Burkina Faso at that time) the official service car of the ministers. He lowered his salary, as President, to only $450 a month and limited his possessions to a car, four bikes, three guitars, and a refrigerator.- He planted over ten million trees to halt the growing desertification of the Sahel and established an ambitious road and rail construction program to “tie the nation together.”- He was known for jogging unaccompanied through the capital city in his track suit and posing in his tailored military fatigues with his mother-of-pearl pistol. And when asked why he didn’t want his portrait hung in public places, as was the norm for other African leaders, he said ”there are seven million Thomas Sankaras.”

Sankara’s revolutionary policies for self-reliance and defiance against the neoliberal development strategies imposed by the West made him an icon to many supporters of African liberation. But his policies alienated and antagonized the vested interests of the small but powerful Burkinabe middle class, the tribal leaders who he stripped of the traditional right to forced labor and tribute payments, and the foreign financial interests in France and their ally Ivory Coast.

Compaore and Sankara

On October 15, 1987 Sankara was killed by an armed militia of twelve officials in a coup d’état organized by Compaore. Sankara’s body was dismembered and buried in an unmarked grave. Compaore immediately took power, overturning most of Sankara’s policies. Compaore reportedly ousted Sankara because he believed that his revolutionary policies were jeopardizing Burkina Faso’s relationship with France and Ivory Coast. Sankara and Compaore were not only colleagues, they were childhood friends.

-This is why ‘Bad Karma’ should be Blaise Compaore’s middle name. He is a ruthless man who orchestrated the brutal assassination of his best friend.

-Yet he is the man routinely designated by the international community to act as a ’mediator’ to help resolve African conflicts…

A Dictum To Freedom

Closing Thoughts: FB and The Making and Discourse about "Change" in Mzantsi

To add up and add another perspective from Wilson who says that according to Ronald Leifer (1969) defined the ethnicization of psychotherapy "as the molding and polarization of behavior so that it conforms to prevailing cultural patterns. It is indoctrination or training for culturally specific traits, attitudes, and actions." thus, Wilson states that "The aim of ethnicized psychotherapy is to return the deviant to "Normal", i.e., to instil in the deviant a set of particular traits, attitudes, values, behavioral orientations, and goals which when pursued or realized, support and maintain the political-economic social status quo along with its ruling elite ... Ethnicized psychotherapy, too, views any form of behavior and stat4e of consciousness which do not conform to the norms or political-economic interests of the ruling establishment or group as, "by definition, a reflection of individual maladjustment, emotional immaturity, mental pathology, or some other negatively valued concept". Thus, problems which may be reflective of social and political problems are dismissed as the ailments of isolated individuals, as evidence of individual maladjustment, the epiphenomena of a distorted personality and economic forces which generate their existence from. " This, according to me, and also, according to your quote above, is designed and 'guaranteed to make us sick and crazy" as we are now here in Mzantsi....!

"Hepi!" Tshiks, and hope you have a greatest next incoming year...Tshikosi cited this piece from Amos Wilson:

SUCCESSFUL FAILURE: Success can be a type of failure. That is one reason why success does not bring the kind of personal satisfaction and peace that many people seek. And why often the individual, despite all of the material evidences of having succeeded, still feels psychologically cheated - because one can achieve for the wrong reason. So when we achieve to prove to somebody else, to show the white-folk that we can do it as good as they do it, it is a success that still is guaranteed to make us sick - Dr.Amos Wilson

Skhokho Added:

Wilson says that according to Ronald Leifer (1969) defined the ethnicization of psychotherapy "as the molding and polarization of behavior so that it conforms to prevailing cultural patterns. It is indoctrination or training for culturally specific traits, attitudes, and actions." Thus, Wilson states that "The aim of ethnicized psychotherapy is to return the deviant to "Normal", i.e., to instil in the deviant a set of particular traits, attitudes, values, behavioral orientations, and goals which when pursued or realized, support and maintain the political-economic social status quo along with its ruling elite ... Ethnicized psychotherapy, too, views any form of behavior and state of consciousness which do not conform to the norms or political-economic interests of the ruling establishment or group as, "by definition, a reflection of individual maladjustment, emotional immaturity, mental pathology, or some other negatively valued concept".

"Thus, problems which may be reflective of social and political problems are dismissed as the ailments of isolated individuals, as evidence of individual maladjustment, eht epiphenomena of a distorted personality and economic forces which generate their existence from. " This, according to me, according to your quote above, is designed and 'guaranteed to make us sick and crazy" as we are now here in Mzantsi....! Well, Tshiks, I hope you have a greatest next incoming year... Both of us are cognizant of the fact that we are sick and made so in a myriad ways, and we're immersed in and embedded into this oppressive juggernaut and it feels like we are still riding the back of a tiger, and that we need to begin to learn and read about the causes of our dysfunction and sickness without being belligerent, ignorant and spiteful of each other, as we have see happen here on the Facebook. Getting our act together is recognizing and diagnosing our social malaise, and act in the midst of our people by affecting their suffering and creating programs and helping, without sounding of like dummies knocking against each other on the FB; and, in the final analysis, the madness, sicknesses and psychological malfunction needs to be checked, and as I have been saying throughout this year now ending- we need to come up with better results next year and hope that will be the case-we are far much more better than what and where we are now. However one uses "ENGLISH", so long as it drives home concrete lesson and teachable moments which are so sorely needed-who cares how that "ENGLISH" is used, and the very critics use the same 'masters language to crush those they dislike', for dumb, ignorant, vindictive and regressive reasons like "how they write English-As if that a point worth talking about in this dire time in Mzantsi. Instead of the ideas and the information this "ENGLISH" is sharing by the one using it-to elucidate(clarify) some points about the struggle of Africans here at home. This is part of our sickness and madness, and the sooner we recognize it as such, the better we will be able to combat and rectify these sicknesses, as per Wilson, and what we can see for ourselves where we live(for some of us who still live in Kasi( mo-lokishini, and never left it) ...

As I have said, I join and belong to no organization, but by virtue of being an African of Mzantsi, I have the right to my opinions and have to respect other's opinions too. With this spirit in mind, "Hepi"!, Tshiks, and you've been a sport, especially for me, and I felt I should talk it out here on FB, when it come to you 'le botho ba hao". You are great, along with all those positive people you are with... Each one Teach one; each one reach one...

Curriculum Development

History teaches us clearly that the battle against colonialism does not run straight away along the lines of nationalism. For a very long time the native devotes his energies to ending certain definite abuses: forced labour, corporal punishment, inequality of salaries, limitation of political rights, etc. This fight for democracy against the oppression of mankind will slowly leave the confusion of neo-liberal universalism to emerge, sometimes laboriously, as a claim to nationhood. It so happens that the unpreparedness of the educated classes, the lack of practical links between them and the mass of the people, their laziness, and, let it be said, their cowardice at the decisive moment of the struggle will give rise to tragic mishaps.

National consciousness, instead of being the all-embracing crystallization of the innermost hopes of the whole people, instead of being the immediate and most obvious result of the mobilization of the people, will be in any case only an empty shell, a crude and fragile travesty of what it might have been. The faults that we find in it are quite sufficient explanation of the facility with which, when dealing with young and independent nations, the nation is passed over for the race, and the tribe is preferred to the state. These are the cracks in the edifice which show the process of retrogression that is so harmful and prejudicial to national effort and national unity. We shall see that such retrograde steps with all the weaknesses and serious dangers that they entail are the historical result of the incapacity of the national middle class to rationalize popular action, that is to say their incapacity to see into the reasons for that action.

This traditional weakness, which is almost congenital to the national consciousness of under-developed countries, is not solely the result of the mutilation of the colonized people by the colonial regime. It is also the result of the intellectual laziness of the national middle class, of its spiritual penury, and of the profoundly cosmopolitan mould that its mind is set in.

The national middle class which takes over power at the end of the colonial regime is an under-developed middle class. It has practically no economic power, and in any case it is in no way commensurate with the bourgeoisie of the mother country which it hopes to replace. In its wilful narcissism, the national middle class is easily convinced that it can advantageously replace the middle class of the mother country. But that same independence which literally drives it into a comer will give rise within its ranks to catastrophic reactions, and will oblige it to send out frenzied appeals for help to the former mother country. The university and merchant classes which make up the most enlightened section of the new state are in fact characterized by the smallness of their number and their being concentrated in the capital, and the type of activities in which they are engaged: business, agriculture and the liberal professions. Neither financiers nor industrial magnates are to be found within this national middle class. The national bourgeoisie of under-developed countries is not engaged in production, nor in invention, nor building, nor labour; it is completely canalized into activities of the intermediary type. Its innermost vocation seems to be to keep in the running and to be part of the racket. The psychology of the national bourgeoisie is that of the businessman, not that of a captain of industry; and it is only too true that the greed of the settlers and the system of embargoes set up by colonialism has hardly left them any other choice.

Under the colonial system, a middle class which accumulates capital is an impossible phenomenon. Now, precisely, it would seem that the historical vocation of an authentic national middle class in an under-developed country is to repudiate its own nature in so far as it is bourgeois, that is to say in so far as it is the tool of capitalism, and to make itself the willing slave of that revolutionary capital which is the people.

In an under-developed country an authentic national middle class ought to consider as its bounden duty to betray the calling fate has marked out for it, and to put itself to school with the people: in other words to put at the people’s disposal the intellectual and technical capital that it has snatched when going through the colonial universities. But unhappily we shall see that very often the national middle class does not follow this heroic, positive, fruitful and just path; rather, it disappears with its soul set at peace into the shocking ways — shocking because anti-national — of a traditional bourgeoisie, of a bourgeoisie which is stupidly, contemptibly, cynically bourgeois.

The objective of nationalist parties as from a certain given period is, we have seen, strictly national. They mobilize the people with slogans of independence, and for the rest leave it to future events. When such parties are questioned on the economic programme of the state that they are clamouring for, or on the nature of the regime which they propose to install, they are incapable of replying, because, precisely, they are completely ignorant of the economy of their own country.

This economy has always developed outside the limits of their knowledge. They have nothing more than an approximate, bookish acquaintance with the actual and potential resources of their country’s soil and mineral deposits; and therefore they can only speak of these resources on a general and abstract plane. After independence this under-developed middle class, reduced in numbers and without capital, which refuses to follow the path of revolution, will fall into deplorable stagnation. It is unable to give free rein to its genius, which formerly it was wont to lament, though rather too glibly, was held in check by colonial domination. The precariousness of its resources and the paucity of its managerial class forces it back for years into an artisan economy. From its point of view, which is inevitably a very limited one, a national economy is an economy based on what may be called local products. Long speeches will be made about the artisan class. Since the middle classes find it impossible to set up factories that would be more profit-earning both for themselves and for the country as a whole, they will surround the artisan class with a chauvinistic tenderness in keeping with the new awareness of national dignity, and which moreover will bring them in quite a lot of money. This cult of local products and this incapability to seek out new systems of management will be equally manifested by the bogging down of the national middle class in the methods of agricultural production which were characteristic of the colonial period.

The national economy of the period of independence is not set on a new footing. It is still concerned with the ground-nut harvest, with the cocoa crop and the olive yield. In the same way there is no change in the marketing of basic products, and not a single industry is set up in the country. We go on sending out raw materials; we go on being Europe’s small farmers who specialize in unfinished products.

Yet the national middle class constantly demands the nationalization of the economy and of the trading sectors. This is because, from their point of view, nationalization does not mean placing the whole economy at the service of the nation and deciding to satisfy the needs of the nation. For them, nationalization does not mean governing the state with regard to the new social relations whose growth it has been decided to encourage. To them, nationalization quite simply means the transfer into native hands of those unfair advantages which are a legacy of the colonial period.

Since the middle class has neither sufficient material nor intellectual resources (by intellectual resources we mean engineers and technicians) it limits its claims to the taking over of business offices and commercial houses formerly occupied by the settlers. The national bourgeoisie steps into the shoes of the former European settlement: doctors, barristers, traders, commercial travellers, general agents and transport agents. It considers that the dignity of the country and its own welfare require that it should occupy all these posts. From now on it will insist that all the big foreign companies should pass through its hands, whether these companies wish to keep on their connexions with the country, or to open it up. The national middle class discovers its historic mission: that of intermediary.

Seen through its eyes, its mission has nothing to do with transforming the nation; it consists, prosaically, of being the transmission line between the nation and a capitalism, rampant though camouflaged, which today puts on the masque of neocolonialism. The national bourgeoisie will be quite content with the role of the Western bourgeoisie’s business agent, and it will play its part without any complexes in a most dignified manner. But this same lucrative role, this cheap-jack’s function, this meanness of outlook and this absence of all ambition symbolize the incapability of the national middle class to fulfil its historic role of bourgeoisie. Here, the dynamic, pioneer aspect, the characteristics of the inventor and of the discoverer of new worlds which are found in all national bourgeoisies are lamentably absent. In the colonial countries, the spirit of indulgence is dominant at the core of the bourgeoisie; and this is because the national bourgeoisie identifies itself with the Western bourgeoisie, from whom it has learnt its lessons. It follows the West-em bourgeoisie along its path of negation and decadence without ever having emulated it in its first stages of exploration and invention, stages which are an acquisition of that Western bourgeoisie whatever the circumstances. In its beginnings, the national bourgeoisie of the colonial countries identifies itself with the decadence of the bourgeoisie of the West. We need not think that it is jumping ahead; it is in fact beginning at the end. It is already senile before it has come to know the petulance, the fearlessness or the will to succeed of youth.

The national bourgeoisie will be greatly helped on its way towards decadence by the Western bourgeoisies, who come to it as tourists avid for the exotic, for big-game hunting and for casinos. The national bourgeoisie organizes centres of rest and relaxation and pleasure resorts to meet the wishes of the Western bourgeoisie. Such activity is given the name of tourism, and for the occasion will be built up as a national industry. If proof is needed of the eventual transformation of certain elements of the ex-native bourgeoisie into the organizers of parties for their Western opposite numbers, it is worth while having a look at what has happened in Latin America. The casinos of Havana and of Mexico, the beaches of Rio, the little Brazilian and Mexican girls, the half-breed thirteen-year-olds, the ports of Acapulco and Copacabana — all these are the stigma of this depravation of the national middle class. Because it is bereft of ideas, because it lives to itself and cuts itself off from the people, undermined by its hereditary incapacity to think in terms of all the problems of the nation as seen from the point of view of the whole of that nation, the national middle class will have nothing better to do than to take on the role of manager for Western enterprise, and it will in practice set up its country as the brothel of Europe.

Once again we must keep before us the unfortunate example of certain Latin American republics. The banking magnates, the technocrats and the big businessmen of the United States have only to step on to a plane and they are wafted into sub-tropical climes, there for a space of a week or ten days to luxuriate in the delicious depravities which their ‘reserves’ hold for them.

The behaviour of the national landed proprietors is practically identical with that of the middle classes of the towns. The big farmers have, as soon as independence was proclaimed, demanded the nationalization of agricultural production. Through manifold scheming practices they manage to make a clean sweep of the farms formerly owned by settlers, thus rein-forcing their hold on the district. But they do not try to introduce new agricultural methods, nor to farm more intensively, nor to integrate their farming systems into a genuinely national economy.

In fact, the landed proprietors will insist that the state should give them a hundred times more facilities and privileges than were enjoyed by the foreign settlers in former times. The exploitation of agricultural workers will be intensified and made legitimate. Using two or three slogans, these new colonists will demand an enormous amount of work from the agricultural labourers, in the name of the national effort of course. There will be no modernization of agriculture, no planning for development, and no initiative; for initiative throws these people into a panic since it implies a minimum of risk, and completely upsets the hesitant, prudent, landed bourgeoisie, which gradually slips more and more into the lines laid down by colonialism. In. the districts where this is the case, the only efforts made to better things are due to the government; it orders them, encourages them and finances them. The landed bourgeoisie refuses to take the slightest risk, and remains opposed to any venture and to any hazard. It has no intention of building upon sand; it demands solid investments and quick returns. The enormous profits which it pockets, enormous if we take into account the national revenue, are never reinvested. The money-in-the-stocking mentality is dominant in the psychology of these landed proprietors. Sometimes, especially in the years immediately following independence, the bourgeoisie does not hesitate to invest in foreign banks the profits that it makes out of its native soil.

On the other hand large sums are spent on display: on cars, country houses, and on all those things which have been justly described by economists as characterizing an under-developed bourgeoisie.

We have said that the native bourgeoisie which comes to power uses its class aggressiveness to corner the positions formerly kept for foreigners. On the morrow of independence, in fact, it violently attacks colonial personalities: barristers, traders, landed proprietors, doctors and higher civil servants. It will fight to the bitter end against these people ‘who insult our dignity as a nation’. It waves aloft the notion of the nationalization and Aricanization of the ruling classes. The fact is that such action will become more and more tinged by racism, until the bourgeoisie bluntly puts the problem to the government by saying ‘We must have these posts’. They will not stop their snarling until they have taken over every one.

The working class of the towns, the masses of unemployed, the small artisans and craftsmen for their part line up behind this nationalist attitude; but in all justice let it be said, they only follow in the steps of their bourgeoisie. If the national bourgeoisie goes into competition with the Europeans, the artisans and craftsmen start a fight against non-national Africans. In the Ivory Coast, the anti-Dahoman and anti-Voltaic troubles are in fact racial riots. The Dahoman and Voltaic peoples, who control the greater part of the petty trade, are, once independence is declared, the object of hostile manifestations on the part of the people of the Ivory Coast. From nationalism we have passed to ultra-nationalism, to chauvinism, and finally to racism. These foreigners are called on to leave; their shops are burned, their street stalls are wrecked, and in fact the government of the Ivory Coast commands them to go, thus giving their nationals satisfaction. In Senegal it is the anti-Sudanese demonstrations which called forth these words from Mr Mamadou Dia:

“The truth is that the Senegalese people have only adopted the Mali mystique through attachment to its leaders. Their adhesion to the Mali has no other significance than that of a fresh act of faith in the political policy of the latter. The Senegalese territory was no less real, in fact it was all the more so in that the presence of the Sudanese in Dakar too obviously manifested for it to be forgotten. It is this fact which explains that, far from being regretted, the break-up of the Federation has been greeted with relief by the mass of the people and nowhere was a hand raised to maintain it.” (Mamadou Dia: Nations africaines et sohdarite mondial, Presses Universitaires de France, p. 140.)

While certain sections of the Senegalese people jump at the chance which is afforded them by their own leaders to get rid of the Sudanese, who hamper them in commercial matters or in administrative posts, the Congolese, who stood by hardly daring to believe in the mass exodus of the Belgians, decide to bring pressure to bear on the Senegalese who have settled in Leopoldville and Elizabethville and to get them to leave.

As we see it, the mechanism is identical in the two sets of circumstances. If the Europeans get in the way of the intellectuals and business bourgeoisie of the young nation, for the mass of the people in the towns competition is represented principally by Africans of another nation. On the Ivory Coast these competitors are the Dahomans; in Ghana they are the Nigerians; in Senegal, they are the Sudanese.

When the bourgeoisie’s demands for a ruling class made up exclusively of Negroes or Arabs do not spring from an authentic movement of nationalization but merely correspond to an anxiety to place in the bourgeoisie’s hands the power held hitherto by the foreigner, the masses on their level present the same demands, confining, however, the notion of Negro or Arab within certain territorial limits. Between resounding assertions of the unity of the continent and this behaviour of the masses which has its inspiration in their leaders, many different attitudes may be traced. We observe a permanent see-saw between African unity, which fades quicker and quicker into the mists of oblivion, and a heart-breaking return to chauvinism in its most bitter and detestable form.

“On the Senegalese side, the leaders who have been the main theoreticians of African unity, and who several times over have sacrificed their local political organizations and their personal positions to this idea, are, though in all good faith, undeniably responsible. Their mistake — our mistake — has been, under pretext of fighting ‘Balkanization’, not to have taken into consideration the pre-colonial fact of territorialism. Our mistake has been not to have paid enough attention in our analyses to this phenomenon, which is the fruit of colonialism if you like, but also a sociological fact which no theory of unity, be it ever so laudable or attractive, can abolish. We have allowed ourselves to be seduced by a mirage; that of the structure which is the most pleasing to our minds; and, mistaking our ideal for reality, we have believed it enough to condemn territorialism, and its natural sequel, micro-nationalism, for us to get the better of them, and to assure the success of our chimerical undertaking”. (Mamadou Dia, op. cit.)

From the chauvinism of the Senegalese to the tribalism of the Yolofs is not a big step. For, in fact, everywhere that the national bourgeoisie has failed to break through to the people as a whole, to enlighten them, and to consider all problems in the first place with regard to them — a failure due to the bourgeoisie’s attitude of mistrust and to the haziness of its political tenets — everywhere where that national bourgeoisie has shown itself incapable of extending its vision of the world sufficiently, we observe a falling back towards old tribal attitudes, and, furious and sick at heart, we perceive that race feeling in its most exacerbated form is triumphing. Since the sole motto of the bourgeoisie is ‘Replace the foreigner’, and because it hastens in every walk of life to secure justice for itself and to take over the posts that the foreigner has vacated, the ‘small people’ of the nation — taxi-drivers, cake-sellers and shoeblacks — will be equally quick to insist that the Dahomans go home to their own country, or will even go further and demand that the Foulbis and the Peuhls return to their jungle or their mountains.

It is from this view-point that we must interpret the fact that in young, independent countries, here and there federalism triumphs. We know that colonial domination has marked certain regions out for privilege. The colony’s economy is not integrated into that of the nation as a whole. It is still organized in order to complete the economy of the different mother countries. Colonialism hardly ever exploits the whole of a country. It contents itself with bringing to light the natural resources, which it extracts, and exports to meet the needs of the mother country’s industries, thereby allowing certain sectors of the colony to become relatively rich. But the rest of the colony follows its path of under-development and poverty, or at all events sinks into it more deeply.

Immediately after independence, the nationals who live in the more prosperous regions realize their good luck, and show a primary and profound reaction in refusing to feed the other nationals. The districts which are rich in ‘ground-nuts, in cocoa and in diamonds come to the forefront, and dominate the empty panorama which the rest of the nation presents. The nationals of these rich regions look upon the others with hatred, and find in them envy and covetousness, and homicidal impulses. Old rivalries which were there before colonialism, old inter-racial hatred come to the surface. The Balubas refuse to feed the Luluas; Katanga forms itself into a state, and Albert Kalondji gets himself crowned king of South Kasai.

African unity, that vague formula, yet one to which the men and women of Africa were passionately attached, and whose operative value served to bring immense pressure to bear on colonialism, African unity takes off the mask, and crumbles into regionalism inside the hollow shell of nationality itself. The national bourgeoisie, since it is strung up to defend its immediate interests, and sees no farther than the end of its nose, reveals itself incapable of simply bringing national unity into being, or of building up the nation on a stable and productive basis. The national front which has forced colonialism to withdraw cracks up, and wastes the victory it has gained.

This merciless fight engaged upon by races and tribes, and this aggressive anxiety to occupy the posts left vacant by the departure of the foreigner, will equally give rise to religious rivalries. In the country districts and the bush, minor con-fraternities, local religions and maraboutic cults will show a new vitality and will once more take up their round of excommunications. In the big towns, on the level of the administrative classes, we will observe the coming to grips of the two great revealed religions, Islam and Catholicism.

Colonialism, which had been shaken to its very foundations by the birth of African unity, recovers its balance and tries now to break that will to unity by using all the movement’s weaknesses. Colonialism will set the African peoples moving by revealing to them the existence of ‘spiritual’ rivalries. In Senegal, it is the newspaper New Africa which week by week distils hatred of Islam and of the Arabs. The Lebanese, in whose hands is the greater part of the small trading enterprises on the western seaboard, are marked out for national obloquy. The missionaries find it opportune to remind the masses that long before the advent of European colonialism the great African empires were disrupted by the Arab invasion. There is no hesitation in saying that it was the Arab occupation which paved the way for European colonialism; Arab imperialism is commonly spoken of, and the cultural. imperialism of Islam is condemned. Moslems are usually kept out of the more important posts. In other regions the reverse is the case, and it is the native Christians who are considered as conscious, objective enemies of national independence.

Colonialism pulls every string shamelessly, and is only too content to set at loggerheads those Africans who only yesterday were leagued against the settlers. The idea of a Saint Bartholomew takes shape in certain minds, and the advocates of colonialism laugh to themselves derisively when they hear magnificent declarations about African unity. Inside a single nation, religion splits up the people into different spiritual communities, all of them kept up and stiffened by colonialism and its instruments. Totally unexpected events break out here and there. In regions where Catholicism or Protestantism predominates, we see the Moslem minorities flinging themselves with unaccustomed ardour into their devotions. The Islamic feast days are revived, and the Moslem religion defends itself inch by inch against the violent absolutism of the Catholic faith. Ministers of state are heard to say for the benefit of certain individuals that if they are not content they have only to go to Cairo. Sometimes American Protestantism transplants its anti-Catholic prejudices into African soil, and keeps up tribal rivalries through religion.

Transporting A Goat In A Bike, In a Third World Country

Poor States Of Africa

Frantz Fanon Continues:

"Taking the continent as a whole, this religious tension may be responsible for the revival of the commonest racial feeling. Africa is divided into Black and White, and the names that are substituted — Africa south of the Sahara, Africa north of the Sahara — do not manage to hide this latent racism. Here, it is affirmed that White Africa has a thousand-year-old tradition of culture; that she is Mediterranean, that she is a Continuation of Europe and that she shares in Graeco-Latin civilization.

Black Africa is looked on as a region that is inert, brutal, uncivilized — in a word, savage. There, all day long you may hear unpleasant remarks about veiled women, polygamy and the supposed disdain the Arabs have for the feminine sex. All such remarks are reminiscent in their aggressiveness of those that are so often heard coming from the settler’s lips.

The national bourgeoisie of each of these two great religions, which has totally assimilated colonialist thought in its most corrupt form, takes over from the Europeans and establishes in the continent a racial philosophy which is extremely harmful for the future of Africa. By its laziness and will to imitation, it promotes the ingrafting and stiffening of racism which was characteristic of the colonial era.

Thus it is by no means astonishing to hear in a country that calls itself African remarks which are neither more nor less than racist, and to observe the existence of paternalist behaviour which gives you the bitter impression that you are in Paris, Brussels or London.

In certain regions of Africa, drivelling paternalism with regard to the blacks and the loathsome idea derived from Western culture that the black man is impervious to logic and the sciences reign in all their nakedness. Sometimes it may be ascertained that the black minorities are hemmed in by a kind of semi-slavery which renders legitimate that species of wariness, or in other words mistrust, which the countries of Black Africa feel with regard to the countries of White Africa. It is all too common that a citizen of Black Africa hears himself called a ‘Negro’ by the children when walking in the streets of a big town in White Africa, or finds that civil servants address him in pidgin English.

Yes, unfortunately it is not unknown that students from Black Africa who attend secondary schools north of the Sahara hear their schoolfellows asking if in their country there are houses, if they know what electricity is, or if they practise cannibalism in their families. Yes, unfortunately it is not unknown that in certain regions north of the Sahara Africans coming from countries south of the Sahara meet nationals who implore them to take them ‘anywhere at all on condition we meet Negroes’.

In parallel fashion, in certain young states of Black Africa members of parliament, or even ministers, maintain without a trace of humour that the danger is not at all of a reoccupation of their country by colonialism but of an eventual invasion by ‘those vandals of Arabs coming from the North’.

As we see it, the bankruptcy of the bourgeoisie is not apparent in the economic field only. They have come to power in the name of a narrow nationalism and representing a race; they will prove themselves incapable of triumphantly putting into practice a programme with even a minimum humanist content, in spite of fine-sounding declarations which are devoid of meaning since the speakers bandy about in irresponsible fashion phrases that come straight out of European treatises on morals and political philosophy.

When the bourgeoisie is strong, when it can arrange everything and everybody to serve its power, it does not hesitate to affirm positively certain democratic ideas which claim to be universally applicable. There must be very exceptional circumstances if such a bourgeoisie, solidly based economically, is forced into denying its own humanist ideology. The Western bourgeoisie, though fundamentally racist, most often manages to mask this racism by a multiplicity of nuances which allow it to preserve intact its proclamation of mankind’s outstanding dignity.

The Western bourgeoisie has prepared enough fences and railings to have no real fear of the competition of those whom it exploits and holds in contempt. Western bourgeois racial prejudice as regards the nigger and the Arab is a racism of contempt; it is a racism which minimizes what it hates. Bourgeois ideology, however, which is the proclamation of an essential equality between men, manages to appear logical in its own eyes by inviting the sub-men to become human, and to take as their prototype Western humanity as incarnated in the Western bourgeoisie.

The racial prejudice of the young national bourgeoisie is a racism of defence, based on fear. Essentially it is no different from vulgar tribalism, or the rivalries between septs or confraternities. We may understand why keen-wined international observers have hardly taken seriously the great flights of oratory about African unity, for it is true that there are so many cracks in that unity visible to the naked eye that it is only reasonable to insist that all these contradictions ought to be resolved before the day of unity can come.

The people of Africa have only recently come to know themselves. They have decided, in the name of the whole continent, to weigh in strongly against the colonial regime. Now the nationalist bourgeoisies, who in region after region hasten to make their own fortunes and to set up a national system of exploitation, do their utmost to put obstacles in the path of this ‘Utopia’. The national bourgeoisies, who are quite clear as to what their objectives are, have decided to bar the way to that unity, to that coordinated effort on the part of two hundred and fifty million men to triumph over stupidity, hunger and inhumanity at one and the same time. This is why we must understand that African unity can only be achieved through the upward thrust of the people, and under the leadership of the people, that is to say, in defiance of the interests of the bourgeoisie.

As regards internal affairs and in the sphere of institutions, the national bourgeoisie will give equal proof of its incapacity. In a certain number of under-developed countries the parliamentary game is faked from the beginning. Powerless economically, unable to bring about the existence of coherent social relations, and standing on the principle of its domination as a class, the bourgeoisie chooses the solution that seems to it the easiest, that of the single party. It does not yet have the quiet conscience and the cairn that economic power and the control of the state machine alone can give. It does not create a state that reassures the ordinary citizen, but rather one that rouses his anxiety

The state, which by its strength and discretion ought to inspire confidence and disarm and lull everybody to sleep, on the contrary seeks to impose itself in spectacular fashion. It makes a display, it jostles people and bullies them, thus intimating to the citizen that he is in continual danger. The single party is the modem form of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, unmasked, unpainted, unscrupulous and cynical.

It is true that such a dictatorship does not go very far. It cannot halt the processes of its own contradictions. Since the bourgeoisie has not the economic means to ensure its domination and to throw a few crumbs to the rest of the country; since, moreover, it is preoccupied with filling its pockets as rapidly as possible but also as prosaically as possible, the country sinks all the more deeply into stagnation. And in order to hide this stagnation and to mask this regression, to reassure itself and to give itself something to boast about, the bourgeoisie can find nothing better to do than to erect grandiose buildings in the capital and to lay out money on what are called prestige expenses.

The national bourgeoisie turns its back more and more on the interior and on the real facts of its undeveloped country, and tends to look towards the former mother country and the foreign capitalists who count on its obliging compliance. As it does not share its profits with the people and in no way allows them to enjoy any of the dues that are paid to it by the big foreign companies, it will discover the need for a popular leader to whom will fall the dual role of stabilizing the regime and of perpetuating the domination of the bourgeoisie. The bourgeois dictatorship of under-developed countries draws its strength from the existence of a leader. We know that in the well-developed countries the bourgeois dictatorship is the result of the economic power of the bourgeoisie. In the under-developed countries on the contrary the leader stands for moral power, in whose shelter the thin and poverty-stricken bourgeoisie of the young nation decides to get rich.

The people who for years on end have seen this leader and heard him speak, who from a distance in a kind of dream have followed his contests with the colonial power, spontaneously put their trust in this patriot. Before independence, the leader generally embodies the aspirations of the people for independence, political liberty and national dignity. But as soon as independence is declared, far from embodying in concrete form the needs of the people in what touches bread, land and the restoration of the country to the sacred hands of the people, the leader will reveal his inner purpose: to become the general president of that company of profiteers impatient for their returns which constitutes the national bourgeoisie.

In spite of his frequently honest conduct and his sincere declarations, the leader as seen objectively is the fierce defender of these interests, today combined, of the national bourgeoisie and the ex-colonial companies. His honesty, which is his soul’s true bent, crumbles away little by little. His contact with the masses is so unreal that he comes to believe that his authority is hated and that the services that he has rendered his country are being called in question. The leader judges the ingratitude of the masses harshly, and every day that passes ranges himself a little more resolutely on the side of the exploiters. He therefore knowingly becomes the aider and abettor of the young bourgeoisie which is plunging into the mire of corruption and pleasure.

The economic channels of the young state sink back inevitably into neo-colonialist lines. The national economy, formerly protected, is today literally controlled. The budget is balanced through loans and gifts, while every three or four months the chief ministers themselves or else their governmental delegations come to the erstwhile mother countries or elsewhere, fishing for capital.

The former colonial power increases its demands, accumulates concessions and guarantees and takes fewer and fewer pains to mask the hold it has over the national government. The people stagnate deplorably in unbearable poverty; slowly they awaken to the unutterable treason of their leaders. This awakening is all the more acute in that the bourgeoisie is incapable of learning its lesson. The distribution of wealth that it effects is not spread out between a great many sectors; it is not ranged among different levels, nor does it set up a hierarchy of half-tones. The new caste is an affront all the more disgusting in that the immense majority, nine-tenths of the population, continue to die of starvation. The scandalous enrichment, speedy and pitiless, of this caste is accompanied by a decisive awakening on the part of the people, and a growing awareness that promises stormy days to come. The bourgeois caste, that section of the nation which annexes for its own profit all the wealth of the country, by a kind of unexpected logic will pass disparaging judgements upon the other Negroes and the other Arabs that more often than not are reminiscent of the racist doctrines of the former representatives of the colonial power. At one and the same time the poverty of the people, the immoderate money-making of the bourgeois caste, and its widespread scorn for the rest of the nation will harden thought and action.

But such threats will lead to the re-affirmation of authority and the appearance of dictatorship. The leader, who has behind him a lifetime of political action and devoted patriotism, constitutes a screen between the people and the rapacious bourgeoisie since he stands surety for the ventures of that caste and closes his eyes to their insolence, their mediocrity and their fundamental immorality. He acts as a braking-power on the awakening consciousness of the people. He comes to the aid of the bourgeois caste and hides his manoeuvres from the people, thus becoming the most eager worker in the task of mystifing and bewildering the masses. Every time he speaks to the people he calls to mind his often heroic life, the struggles he has led in the name of the people and the victories in their name he has achieved, thereby intimating clearly to the masses that they ought to go on putting their confidence in him. There are plenty of examples of African patriots who have introduced into the cautious political advance of their elders a decisive style characterized by its nationalist outlook. These men came from the backwoods, and they proclaimed, to the scandal of the dominating power and the shame of the nationals of the capital, that they came from the backwoods and that they spoke in the name of the Negroes. These men, who have sung the praises of their race, who have taken upon themselves the whole burden of the past, complete with cannibalism and degeneracy, find themselves today, alas, at the head of a team of administrators who turn their back on the jungle and who proclaim that the vocation of their people is to obey, to go on obeying and to be obedient till the end of time.

The leader pacifies the people. For years on end after independence has been won, we see him, incapable of urging on the people to a concrete task, unable really to open the future to them or of flinging them into the path of national reconstruction, that is to say, of their own reconstruction; we see him reassessing the history of independence and recalling the sacred unity of the struggle for liberation. The leader, because he refuses to break up the national bourgeoisie, asks the people to fall back into the past and to become drunk on the remembrance of the epoch which led up to independence. The leader, seen objectively, brings the people to a halt and persists in either expelling them from history or preventing them from taking root in it. During the struggle for liberation the leader awakened the people and promised them a forward march, heroic and unmitigated. Today, he uses every means to put them to sleep, and three or four times a year asks them to remember the colonial period and to look back on the long way they have come since then.

Now it must be said that the masses show themselves totally incapable of appreciating the long way they have come. The peasant who goes on scratching out a living from the soil, and the unemployed man who never finds employment do not manage, in spite of public holidays and flags, new and brightly-coloured though they may be, to convince themselves that anything has really changed in their lives. The bourgeoisie who are in power vainly increase the number of processions; the masses have no illusions. They are hungry; and the police officers, though now they are Africans, do not serve to reassure them particularly. The masses begin to sulk; they turn away from this nation in which they have been given no place and begin to lose interest in it.

From time to time, however, the leader makes an effort; he speaks on the radio or makes a tour of the country to pacify the people, to calm them and bemuse them. The leader is all the more necessary in that there is no party. During the period of the struggle for independence there was one right enough, a party led by the present leader. But since then this patty has sadly disintegrated; nothing is left but the shell of a party, the name, the emblem and the motto. The living party, which ought to make possible the free exchange of ideas which have been elaborated according to the real needs of the mass of the people, has been transformed into a trade union of individual interests. Since the proclamation of independence the party no longer helps the people to set out its demands, to become more aware of its needs and better able to establish its power. Today, the party’s mission is to deliver to the people the instructions which issue from the summit. There no longer exists the fruitful give-and-take from the bottom to the top and from the top to the bottom which creates and guarantees democracy in a party. Quite on the contrary, the party has made itself into a screen between the masses and the leaders. There is no longer any party life, for the branches which were set up during the colonial period are today completely demobilized.

The militant champs on his bit. Now it is that the attitude taken up by certain militants during the struggle for liberation is seen to be justified, for the fact is that in the thick of the fight more than a few militants asked the leaders to formulate a dogma, to set out their objectives and to draw up a programme. But under the pretext of safeguarding national unity, the leaders categorically refused to attempt such a task. The only worthwhile dogma, it was repeatedly stated, is the union of the nation against colonialism. And on they went, armed with an impetuous slogan which stood for principles, while their only ideological activity took the form of a series of variants on the theme of the right of peoples to self-determination, borne on the wind of history which would inevitably sweep away colonialism. When the militants asked whether the wind of history couldn’t be a little more clearly analysed, the leaders gave them instead hope and trust, the necessity of decolonialization and its inevitability, and more to that effect.

After independence, the party sinks into an extraordinary lethargy. The militants are only called upon when so-called popular manifestations are afoot, or international conferences, or independence celebrations. The local party leaders are given administrative posts, the party becomes an administration, and the militants disappear into the crowd and take the empty title of citizen. Now that they have fulfilled their historical mission of leading the bourgeoisie to power, they are firmly invited to retire so that the bourgeoisie may carry out its mission in peace and quiet. But we have seen that the national bourgeoisie of under-developed countries is incapable of carrying out any mission whatever. After a few years, the break-up of the party becomes obvious, and any observer, even the most superficial, can notice that the party, today the skeleton of its former self, only serves to immobilize the people. The party, which during the battle had drawn to itself the whole nation, is falling to pieces. The intellectuals who on the eve of independence rallied to the party, now make it dear by their attitude that they gave their support with no other end in view than to secure their slices of the cake of independence. The party is becoming a means of private advancement.

There exists inside the new regime, however, an inequality in the acquisition of wealth and in monopolization. Some have a double source of income and demonstrate that they are specialized in opportunism. Privileges multiply and corruption triumphs, while morality declines. Today the vultures are too numerous and too voracious in proportion to the lean spoils of the national wealth. The party, a true instrument of power in the hands of the bourgeoisie, reinforces the machine, and ensures that the people are hemmed in and immobilized. The party helps the government to hold the people down. It becomes more and more clearly anti-democratic, an implement of coercion. The party is objectively, sometimes subjectively, the accomplice of the merchant bourgeoisie. In the same way that the national bourgeoisie conjures away its phase of construction in order to throw itself into the enjoyment of its wealth, in parallel fashion in the institutional sphere it jumps the parliamentary phase and chooses a dictatorship of the national-socialist type. We know today that this fascism at high interest which has triumphed for half a century in Latin America is the dialectic result of states which were semi-colonial during the period of independence.

In these poor, under-developed countries, where the rule is that the greatest wealth is surrounded by the greatest poverty, the army and the police constitute the pillars of the regime; an army and a police force (another rule which must not be forgotten) which are advised by foreign experts. The strength of the police force and the power of the army are proportionate to the stagnation in which the rest of the nation is sunk. By dint of yearly loans, concessions are snatched up by foreigners; scandals are numerous, ministers grow rich, their wives doll themselves up, the members of parliament feather their nests and there is not a soul down to the simple policeman or the customs officer who does not join in the great procession of corruption.

The opposition becomes more aggressive and the people at once catch on to its propaganda. From now on their hostility to the bourgeoisie is plainly visible. This young bourgeoisie which appears to be afflicted with precocious senility takes no heed of the advice showered upon it, and reveals itself incapable of understanding that it would be in its interest to draw a veil, even if only the flimsiest kind, over its exploitation. It is the most Christian newspaper The African Weekly, published in Brazzaville, which addresses the princes of the regime thus:

“You who are in good positions, you and your wives, today you enjoy many comforts; perhaps a good education, a fine house, good contacts and many missions on which you are delegated which open new horizons to you. But all your wealth forms a hard shell which prevents your seeing the poverty that surrounds you. Take care.”

This warning coming from The African Weekly and, addressed to the henchmen of Monsieur Youlou has, we may imagine, nothing revolutionary about it. What The African Weekly wants to point out to the starvers of the Congolese people is that God will punish their conduct. It continues: ‘If there is no room in your heart for consideration towards those who are beneath you, there will be no room for you in God’s house.'

It is clear that the national bourgeoisie hardly worries at all about such an indictment. With its wave-lengths tuned in to Europe, it continues firmly and resolutely to make the most of the situation. The enormous profits which it derives from the exploitation of the people are exported to foreign countries. The young national bourgeoisie is often more suspicious of the regime that it has set up than are the foreign companies. The national bourgeoisie refuses to invest in its own country and behaves towards the state that protects and nurtures it with, it must be remarked, astonishing ingratitude. It acquires foreign securities in the European markets, and goes off to spend the week-end in Paris or Hamburg. The behaviour of the national bourgeoisie of certain under-developed countries is reminiscent of the members of a gang, who after every hold-up hide their share in the swag from the other members who are their accomplices and prudently start thinking about their retirement. Such behaviour shows that more or less consciously the national bourgeoisie is playing to lose if the game goes on too long.

They guess that the present situation will not last indefinitely but they intend to make the most of it. Such exploitation and such contempt for the state, however, inevitably gives rise to discontent among the mass of the people. It is in these conditions that the regime becomes harsher. In the absence of a parliament it is the army that becomes the arbiter: but sooner or later it will realize its power and will hold over the government’s head the threat of a manifesto.

As we see it, the national bourgeoisie of certain under-developed countries has learned nothing from books. If they had looked closer at the Latin American countries they doubtless would have recognized the dangers which threaten them. We may thus conclude that this bourgeoisie in miniature that thrusts itself into the forefront is condemned to mark time, accomplishing nothing. In under-developed countries the bourgeois phase is impossibly arid. Certainly, there is a police dictatorship and a profiteering caste, but the construction of an elaborate bourgeois society seems to be condemned to failure. The ranks of decked-out profiteers whose grasping hands scrape up the bank-notes from a poverty-stricken country will sooner or later be men of straw in the hands of the army, cleverly handled by foreign experts. In this way the former mother country practises indirect government, both by the bourgeoisie that it upholds and also by the national army led by its experts, an army that pins the people down, immobilizing and terrorizing them.

The observations that we have been able to make about the national bourgeoisie bring us to a conclusion which should cause no surprise. In under-developed countries, the bourgeoisie should not be allowed to find the conditions necessary for its existence and its growth. In other words, the combined effort of the masses led by a party and of intellectuals who are highly conscious and armed with revolutionary principles ought to bar the way to this useless and harmful middle class.

The theoretical question that for the last fifty years has been raised whenever the history of under-developed countries is under discussion — whether or not the bourgeois phase can be skipped — ought to be answered in the field of revolutionary action, and not by logic. The bourgeois phase in under-developed countries can only justify itself in so far as the national bourgeoisie has sufficient economic and technical strength to build up a bourgeois society, to create the conditions necessary for the development of a large-scale proletariat, to mechanize agriculture and finally to make possible the existence of an authentic national culture.

A bourgeoisie similar to that which developed in Europe is able to elaborate an ideology and at the same time strengthen its own power. Such a bourgeoisie, dynamic, educated and secular, has fully succeeded in its undertaking of the accumulation of capital and has given to the nation a minimum of prosperity. In under-developed countries, we have seen that no true bourgeoisie exists; there is only a sort of little greedy caste, avid and voracious, with the mind of a huckster, only too glad to accept the dividends that the former colonial power hands out to it. This get-rich-quick middle class shows itself incapable of great ideas or of inventiveness. It remembers what it has read in European textbooks and imperceptibly it becomes not even the replica of Europe, but its caricature.

The struggle against the bourgeoisie of under-developed countries is far from being a theoretical one. It is not concerned with making out its condemnation as laid down by the judgement of history. The national bourgeoisie of under-developed countries must not be opposed because it threatens to slow down the total, harmonious development of the nation. It must simply be stoutly opposed because, literally, it is good for nothing. This bourgeoisie, expressing its mediocrity in its profits, its achievements and in its thought, tries to hide this mediocrity by buildings which have prestige value at the individual level, by chromium plating on big American cars, by holidays on the Riviera and week-ends in neon-lit night-clubs.

This bourgeoisie which turns its back more and more on the people as a whole does not even succeed in extracting spectacular concessions from the West, such as investments which would be of value for the country’s economy or the setting up of certain industries. On the contrary, assembly plants spring up and consecrate the type of neo-colonialist industrialization in which the country’s economy flounders. Thus it must not be said that the national bourgeoisie retards the country’s evolution, that it makes it lose time or that it threatens to lead the nation up blind alleys. In fact, the bourgeois phase in the history of under-developed countries is a completely useless phase. When this caste has vanished, devoured by its own contradictions, it will be seen that nothing new has happened since independence was proclaimed, and that everything must be started again from scratch. The change-over will not take place at the level of the structures set up by the bourgeoisie during its reign, since that caste has done nothing more than take over unchanged the legacy of the economy, the thought and the institutions left by the colonialists.

It is all the easier to neutralize this bourgeois class in that, as we have seen, it is numerically, intellectually and economic-ally weak. In the colonized territories, the bourgeois caste draws its strength after independence chiefly from agreements reached with the former colonial power. The national bourgeoisie has all the more opportunity to take over from the oppressor since it has been given time for a leisurely tête-á-tête with the ex-colonial power. But deep-rooted contradictions undermine the ranks of that bourgeoisie; it is this that gives the observer an impression of instability. There is not as yet a homogeneity of caste. Many intellectuals, for example, condemn this regime based on the domination of the few. In under-developed countries, there are certain members of the elite, intellectuals and civil servants, who are sincere, who feel the necessity for a planned economy, the outlawing of profiteers and the strict prohibition of attempts at mystification. In addition, such men fight in a certain measure for the mass participation of the people in the ordering of public affairs.

In those under-developed countries which accede to independence, there almost always exists a small number of honest intellectuals, who have no very precise ideas about politics, but who instinctively distrust the race for positions and pensions which is symptomatic of the early days of independence in colonized countries. The personal situation of these men (bread-winners of large families) or their background (hard struggles and a strictly moral upbringing) explain their manifest contempt for profiteers and schemers. We must know how to use these men in the decisive battle that we mean to engage upon which will lead to a healthier outlook for the nation. Closing the road to the national bourgeoisie is, certainly, the means whereby the vicissitudes of new-found independence may be avoided, and with them the decline of morals, the installing of corruption within the country, economic regression, and the immediate disaster of an anti-democratic regime depending on force and intimidation. But it is also the only means towards progress.

What holds up the taking of a decision by the profoundly democratic elements of the young nation and adds to their timidity is the apparent strength of the bourgeoisie. In newly independent under-developed countries, the whole of the ruling class swarms into the towns built by colonialism. The absence of any analysis of the total population induces onlookers to think that there exists a powerful and perfectly organized bourgeoisie. In fact, we know today that the bourgeoisie in under-developed countries is non-existent. What creates a bourgeoisie is not the bourgeois spirit, nor its taste or manners, nor even its aspirations. The bourgeoisie is above all the direct product of precise economic conditions.

Now, in the colonies, the economic conditions are conditions of a foreign bourgeoisie. Through its agents, it is the bourgeoisie of the mother country that we find present in the colonial towns. The bourgeoisie in the colonies is, before independence, a Western bourgeoisie, a true branch of the bourgeoisie of the mother country, that derives its legitimacy, its force and its stability from the bourgeoisie of the homeland. During the period of unrest that precedes independence, certain native elements, intellectuals and traders, who live in the midst of that imported bourgeoisie, try to identify themselves with it. A permanent wish for identification with the bourgeois representatives of the mother country is to be found among the native intellectuals and merchants.

This native bourgeoisie, which has adopted unreservedly and with enthusiasm the ways of thinking characteristic of the mother country, which has become wonderfully detached from its own thought and has based its consciousness upon foundations which are typically foreign, will realize, with its mouth watering, that it lacks something essential to a bourgeoisie: money. The bourgeoisie of an under-developed country is a bourgeoisie in spirit only. It is not its economic strength, nor the dynamism of its leaders, nor the breadth of its ideas that ensures its peculiar quality of bourgeoisie. Consequently it remains at the beginning and for a long time afterwards a bourgeoisie of the civil service. It is the positions that it holds in the new national administration which will give it strength and serenity. If the government gives it enough time and opportunity, this bourgeoisie will manage to put away enough money to stiffen its domination. But it will always reveal itself as incapable of giving birth to an authentic bourgeois society with all the economic and industrial consequences which this entails.

From the beginning the national bourgeoisie directs its efforts towards activities of the intermediary type. The basis of its strength is found in its aptitude for trade and small business enterprises, and in securing commissions. It is not its money that works, but its business acumen. It does not go m for investments and it cannot achieve that accumulation of capital necessary to the birth and blossoming of an authentic bourgeoisie. At that rate it would take centuries to set on foot an embryonic industrial revolution, and in any case it would find the way barred by the relentless opposition of the former mother country, which will have taken all precautions when setting up neo-colonialist trade conventions.

If the government wants to bring the country out of its stagnation and set it well on the road towards development and progress, it must first and foremost nationalize the middle-man’s trading sector. The bourgeoisie, who wish to see both the triumph of the spirit of money-making and the enjoyment of consumer goods, and at the same time the triumph of their contemptuous attitude towards the mass of the people and the scandalous aspect of profit-making (should we not rather call it robbery?), in fact invest largely in this sector. The intermediary market which formerly was dominated by the settlers will be invaded by the young national bourgeoisie. In a colonial economy the intermediary sector is by far the most important. If you want to progress, you must decide in the first few hours to nationalize this sector. But it is clear that such a nationalization ought not to take on a rigidly state-controlled aspect. It is not a question of placing at the head of these services citizens who have had no political education. Every time such a procedure has been adopted it has been seen that the government has in fact contributed to the triumph of a dictatorship of civil servants who had been set in the mould of the former mother country, and who quickly showed themselves incapable of thinking in terms of the nation as a whole. These civil servants very soon began to sabotage the national economy and to throw its structure out of joint; under them, corruption, prevarication, the diversion of stocks and the black market came to stay. Nationalizing the intermediary sector means organizing wholesale and retail cooperatives on a democratic basis; it also means decentralizing these cooperatives by getting the mass of the people interested in the ordering of public affairs. You will not be able to do all this unless you give the people some political education. Previously, it was realized that this key problem should be clarified once and for all. Today, it is true that the principle of the political education of the masses is generally subscribed to in under-developed countries. But it does not seem that this primordial task is really taken to heart. When people stress the need to educate the people politically, they decide to point out at the same time that they want to be supported by the people in the action that they are taking. A government which declares that it wishes to educate the people politically thus expresses its desire to govern with the people and for the people. It ought not to speak a language destined to camouflage a bourgeois administration. In the capitalist countries, the bourgeois governments have long since left this infantile stage of authority behind. To put it bluntly, they govern with the help of their laws, their economic strength and their police. Now that their power is firmly established they no longer need to lose time in striking demagogic attitudes. They govern in their own interests, and they have the courage of their own strength. They have created legitimacy, and they are strong in their own right.

The bourgeois caste in newly independent countries have not yet the cynicism nor the unruffled calm which are founded on the strength of long-established bourgeoisies. From this springs the fact that they show a certain anxiety to hide their real convictions, to side-track, and in short to set themselves up as a popular force. But the inclusion of the masses in politics does not consist in mobilizing three or four times a year ten thousand or a hundred thousand men and women. These mass meetings and spectacular gatherings are akin to the old tactics that date from before independence, whereby you exhibited your forces in order to prove to yourself and to others that you had the people behind you. The political education of the masses proposes not to treat the masses as children but to make adults of them.

This brings us to consider the role of the political party in an under-developed country. We have seen in the preceding pages that very often simple souls, who moreover belong to the newly born bourgeoisie, never stop repeating that in an under-developed country the direction of affairs by a strong authority, in other words a dictatorship, is a necessity. With this in view the party is given the task of supervising the masses. The party plays understudy to the administration and the police, and controls the masses, not in order to make sure that they really participate in the business of governing the nation, but in order to remind them constantly that the government expects from them obedience and discipline. That famous dictatorship, whose supporters believe that it is called for by the historical process and consider it an indispensable prelude to the dawn of independence, in fact symbolizes the decision of the bourgeois caste to govern the under-developed country first with the help of the people, but soon against them. The progressive transformation of the party into an information service is the indication that the government holds itself more and more on the defensive. The incoherent mass of the people is seen as a blind force that must be continually held in check either by mystification or by the fear inspired by the police force. The party acts as a barometer and as an information service. The militant is turned into an informer. He is entrusted with punitive expeditions against the villages. The embryo opposition parties are liquidated by beatings and stonings. The opposition candidates see their houses set on fire. The police increase their provocations. In these conditions, you may be sure, the party is unchallenged and 99.99 per cent of the votes are cast for the governmental candidate. We should add that in Africa a certain number of governments actually behave in this way. All the opposition parties, which moreover are usually progressive and would therefore tend to work for the greater influence of the masses in the conduct of public matters, and who desire that the proud, money-making bourgeoisie should be brought to heel, have been by dint of baton charges and prisons condemned first to silence and then to a clandestine existence.

The political party in many parts of Africa which are today independent is puffed up in a most dangerous way. In the presence of a member of the party, the people are silent, behave like a flock of sheep and publish panegyrics in praise of the government of the leader. But in the street when evening comes, away from the village, in, the cafes or by the river, the bitter disappointment of the people, their despair but also their unceasing anger makes itself heard. The party, instead of welcoming the expression of popular discontentment, instead of taking for its fundamental purpose the free flow of ideas from the people up to the government, forms a screen, and forbids such ideas. The party leaders behave like common sergeant-majors, frequently reminding the people of the need for ‘silence in the ranks’. This party which used to call itself the servant of the people, which used to claim that it worked for the fail expression of the people’s will, as soon as the colonial power puts the country into its control hastens to send the people back to their caves. As far as national unity is concerned the party will also make many mistakes, as for example when the so-called national party behaves as a party based on ethnical differences. It becomes, in fact, the tribe which makes itself into a party. This party which of its own will proclaims that it is a national party, and which claims to speak in the name of the totality of the people, secretly, sometimes even openly organizes an authentic ethnical dictatorship. We no longer see the rise of a bourgeois dictatorship, but a tribal dictatorship. The ministers, the members of the cabinet, the ambassadors and local commissioners are chosen from the same ethnological group as the leader, sometimes directly from his own family. Such regimes of the family sort seem to go back to the old laws of inbreeding, and not anger but shame is felt when we are faced with such stupidity, such an imposture, such intellectual and spiritual poverty. These heads of the government are the true traitors in Africa, for they sell their country to the most terrifying of all its enemies: stupidity. This tribalizing of the central authority, it is certain, encourages regionalist ideas and separatism. All the decentralizing tendencies spring up again and triumph, and the nation falls to pieces, broken in bits. The leader, who once used to call for ‘African unity’ and who thought of his own little family wakes up one day to find himself saddled with five tribes, who also want to have their own ambassadors and ministers; and irresponsible as ever, still unaware and still despicable, he denounces their ‘treason’.

We have more than once drawn attention to the baleful influence frequently wielded by the leader. This is due to the fact that the party in certain districts is organized like a gang, with the toughest person in it as its head. The ascendancy of such a leader and his power over others is often mentioned, and people have no hesitation in declaring, in a tone of slightly admiring complicity that he strikes terror into his nearest collaborators. In order to avoid these many pitfalls an unceasing battle must be waged, a battle to prevent the party ever be-coming a willing tool in the hands of a leader. ‘Leader': the word comes from the English verb ‘to lead’, but a frequent French translation is ‘to drive’. The driver, the shepherd of the people no longer exists today. The people are no longer a herd; they do not need to be driven. If the leader drives me on, I want him to realize that at the same time I show him the way; the nation ought not to be something bossed by a Grand Panjandrum. We may understand the panic caused in governmental circles each time one of these leaders falls ill; they are obsessed by the question of who is to succeed him. What will happen to the country if the leader disappears? The ruling classes who have abdicated in favour of the leader, irresponsible, oblivious of everything and essentially preoccupied with the pleasures of their everyday life, their cocktail parties, their journeys paid for by government money, the profits they can make out of various schemes — from time to time these people discover the spiritual waste land at the heart of the nation.

A country that really wishes to answer the questions that history puts to it, that wants to develop not only its towns but also the brains of its inhabitants, such a country must possess a trustworthy political patty. The party is not a tool in the hands of the government. Quite on the contrary, the party is a tool in the hands of the people; it is they who decide on the policy that the government carries out. The party is not, and ought never to be, the only political bureau where all the members of the government and the chief dignitaries of the regime may meet freely together. Only too frequently the political bureau, unfortunately, consists of all the party and its members who reside permanently in the capital. In an underdeveloped country, the leading members of the party ought to avoid the capital as if it had the plague. They ought, with some few exceptions, to live in the country districts. The centralization of all activity in the city ought to be avoided. No excuse of administrative discipline should be taken as legitimizing that excrescence of a capital which is already over-populated and over-developed with regard to nine-tenths of the country. The party should be decentralized in the extreme. It is the only way to bring life to regions which are dead, those regions which are not yet awakened to life.

In practice, there will be at least one member of the political bureau in each area and he will deliberately not be appointed as head of that area. He will have no administrative powers. The regional member of the political bureau is not expected to hold the highest rank in the regional administrative organization. He ought not automatically to belong to the regional administrative body. For the people, the party is not an authority, but an organism through which they as the people exercise their authority and express their will. The less there is of confusion and duality of powers, the more the party will play its part of guide and the more surely it will constitute for the people a decisive guarantee. If the party is mingled with the government, the fact of being a party militant means that you take the short cut to gain private ends, to hold a post in the government, step up the ladder, get promotion and make a career for yourself.

In an under-developed country, the setting up of dynamic district officials stops the progress whereby the towns become top-heavy, and the incoherent rush towards the cities of the mass of country people. The setting up early in the days of independence of regional organizations and officials who have full authority to do everything in their power to awaken such a region, to bring life to it and to hasten the growth of consciousness in it is a necessity from which there is no escape for a country that wishes to progress. Otherwise, the government big-wigs and the party officials group themselves around the leader. The government services swell to huge proportions, not because they are developing and specializing, but because new-found cousins and fresh militants are looking for jobs and hope to edge themselves into the government machine. And the dream of every citizen is to get up to the capital, and to have his share of the cake. The local districts are deserted; the mass of the country people with no one to lead them, uneducated and unsupported, turn their backs on their poorly-laboured fields and flock towards the outer ring of suburbs, thus swelling out of all proportion the ranks of the lumpen-proletariat.

The moment for a fresh national crisis is not far off. To avoid it, we think that a quite different policy should be followed: that the interior, the back-country ought to be the most privileged part of the country. Moreover, in the last resort, there is nothing inconvenient in the government choosing its seat elsewhere than in the capital. The capital must be deconsecrated; the outcast masses must be shown that we have decided to work for them. It is with this idea in mind ‘that the government of Brazil tried to found Brazilia. The dead city of Rio de Janeiro was an insult to the Brazilian people. But, unfortunately, Brazilia is just another new capital, as monstrous as the first. The only advantage of this achievement is that, today, there exists a road through the bush to it.

No, there is no serious reason which can be opposed to the choice of another capital, or to the moving of the government as a whole towards one of the most under-populated regions. The capital of under-developed countries is a commercial notion inherited from the colonial period. But we who are citizens of the under-developed countries, we ought to seek every occasion for contacts with the rural masses. We must create a national policy, in other words a policy for the masses. We ought never to lose contact with the people which has battled for its independence and for the concrete betterment of its existence.

The native civil servants and technicians ought not to bury themselves in diagrams and statistics, but rather in the heart of the people”. They ought not to bristle up every time there is question of a move to be made to the ‘interior’. We should no longer see the young women of the country threaten their husbands with divorce if they do not manage to avoid being appointed to a rural post. For these reasons, the political bureau of the party ought to treat these forgotten districts in a very privileged manner; and the life of the capital, an altogether artificial life which is stuck on to the real, national life like a foreign body ought to take up the least space possible in the life of the nation, which is sacred and fundamental.

In an under-developed country the party ought to be organized in such fashion that it is not simply content with having contacts with the masses. The party should be the direct expression of the masses. The party is not an administration responsible for transmitting government orders; it is the energetic spokesman and the incorruptible defender of the masses. In order to arrive at this conception of the party, we must above all rid ourselves of the very Western, very bourgeois and therefore contemptuous attitude that the masses are incapable of governing themselves. In fact, experience proves that the masses understand perfectly the most complicated problems. One of the greatest services that the Algerian revolution will have rendered to the intellectuals of Algeria will be to have placed them in contact with the people, to have allowed them to see the extreme, ineffable poverty of the people, at the same time allowing them to watch the awakening of the people’s intelligence and the onward progress of their consciousness. The Algerian people, that mass of starving illiterates, those men and women plunged for centuries in the most appalling obscurity have held out against tanks and aeroplanes, against napalm and ‘psychological services’, but above all against corruption and brain-washing, against traitors and against the ‘national’ armies of General Bellounis. This people has held out in spite of hesitant or feeble individuals, and in spite of would-be dictators. This people has held out because for seven years its struggle has opened up for it vistas that it never dreamed existed. Today, arms factories are working in the midst of the mountains several yards underground; today, the people’s tribunals are functioning at every level, and local planning commissions are organizing the division of large-scale holdings, and working out the Algeria of tomorrow. An isolated individual may obstinately refuse to understand a problem, but the group or the village understands with disconcerting rapidity. It is true that if care is taken to use only a language that is understood by graduates in law and economics, you can easily prove that the masses have to be managed from above. But if you speak the language of every day; if you are not obsessed by the perverse desire to spread confusion and to rid yourself of the people, then you will realize that the masses are quick to seize every shade of meaning and to learn all the tricks of the trade. If recourse is had to technical language, this signifies that it has been decided to consider the masses as uninitiated. Such a language is hard put to it to hide the lecturers’ wish to cheat the people and to leave them out of things. The business of obscuring language is a mask behind which stands out the much greater business of plunder. The people’s property and the people’s sovereignty are to be stripped from them at one and the same time. Everything can be explained to the people, on the single condition that you really want them to understand. And if you think that you don’t need them, and that on the contrary they may hinder the smooth running of the many limited liability companies whose aim it is to make the people even poorer, then the problem is quite clear.

For if you think that you can manage a country without letting the people interfere, if you think that the people upset the game by their mere presence, whether they slow it down or whether by their natural ignorance they sabotage it, then you must have no hesitation: you must keep the people out. Now, it so happens that when the people are invited to partake in the management of the country, they do not slow the movement down but on the contrary they speed it up. We Algerians have had occasion and the good fortune during the course of this war to handle a fair number of questions. In certain country districts, the politico-military leaders of the revolution found themselves in fact confronted with situations which called for radical solutions. We shall look at some of these situations.

During the years 1956-7, French colonialism had marked off certain zones as forbidden, and within these zones people’s movements were strictly controlled. Thus the peasants could no longer go freely to the towns and buy provisions. During this period, the grocers made huge profits. The prices of tea, coffee, sugar, tobacco and salt soared. The black market flourished blatantly. The peasants who could not pay in money mortgaged their crops, in other words their land, or else lopped off field after field of their fathers’ farms and during the second phase worked them for the grocer. As soon as the political commissioners realized the danger of the situation they reacted immediately. Thus a rational system of provisioning was instituted: the grocer who went to the town was obliged to buy from nationalist wholesalers who handed him an invoice which clearly showed the prices of the goods. When the retailer got back to the village, before doing anything else he had to go to the political commissioner who checked the invoice, decided on the margin of profit and fixed the price at which the various goods should be sold. However, the retailer soon discovered a new trick, and after three or four days declared that his stocks had run out. In fact, he went on with his business of selling on the black market on the sly. The reaction of the politico-military authorities was thorough-going. Heavy penalizations were decided on, and the fines collected were put into the village funds and used for social purposes or to pay for public works in the general interest. Sometimes it was decided to shut down the shop for a while. Then if there was a repetition of black marketeering, the business was at once confiscated and a managing committee elected to carry it on, which paid a monthly allowance to the former owner.

Taking these experiences as a starting-point, the functioning of the main laws of economics were explained to the people, with concrete examples. The accumulation of capital ceased to be a theory and became a very real and immediate mode of behaviour. The people understood how that once a man was in trade, he could become rich and increase his turnover. Then and then only did the peasants tell the tale of how the grocer gave them loans at exorbitant interest, and others recalled how he evicted them from their land and how from owners they became labourers. The more the people understand, the more watchful they become, and the more they come to realize that finally everything depends on them and their salvation lies in their own cohesion, in the true understanding of their interests and in knowing who are their enemies. The people come to understand that wealth is not the fruit of labour but the result of organized, protected robbery. Rich people are no longer respectable people; they are nothing more than flesh-eating animals, jackals and vultures which wallow in the people’s blood. With another end in view the political commissioners have had to decide that nobody will work for anyone else any longer. The land belongs to those that till it. This is a principle which has through explanation become a fundamental law of the Algerian revolution. The peasants who used to employ agricultural labourers have been obliged to give a share of the land to their former employees.

So it may be seen that production per acre trebled, in spite of the many raids by the French, in spite of bombardments from the air, and the difficulty of getting manures. The fellahs who at harvest-time were able to judge and weigh the crops thus obtained wanted to know whence came such a phenomenon; and they were quick to understand that the idea of work is not as simple as all that, that slavery is opposed to work, and that work presupposes liberty, responsibility and consciousness.

Perils Of Youth In Developing Countries

The worst thing about poverty is not its mere existence and all accompanying signs of it. The terrifying thing about poverty is that people get used to it, and pass it on through generations. They get used to the vicious circle of growing up in trash

In those districts where we have been able to carry out successfully these interesting experiments, where we have watched man being created by revolutionary beginnings, the peasants have very clearly caught hold of the idea that the more intelligence you bring to your work, the more pleasure you will have in it. We have been able to make the masses understand that work is not simply the output of energy, nor the functioning of certain muscles, but that people work more by using their brains and their hearts than with only their muscles and their sweat. In the same way in these liberated districts which are at the same time excluded from the old trade routes we have had to modify production, which formerly looked only towards the towns and towards export. We have organized production to meet consumers’ needs for the people and for the units of the national army of liberation. We have quadrupled the production of lentils and organized the manufacture of charcoal. Green vegetables and charcoal have been sent through the mountains from the north to the south, whereas the southern districts send meat to the north. This coordination was decided upon by the F.L.N. and they it was who set up the system of communications. We did not have any technicians or planners coming from big Western universities; but in these liberated regions the daily ration went up to the hitherto unheard-of figure of 3,200 calories. The people were not content with coming triumphant out of this test. They started asking themselves theoretical questions: for example, why did certain districts never see an orange before the war of liberation, while thousands of tons are exported every year abroad? Why were grapes unknown to a great many Algerians whereas the European peoples enjoyed them by the million? Today, the people have a very clear notion of what belongs to them. The Algerian people today know that they are the sole owners of the soil and mineral wealth of their country. And if some individuals do not under-stand the unrelenting refusal of the F.L.N. to tolerate any encroachment on this right of ownership, and its fierce refusal to allow any compromise on principles, they must one and all remember that the Algerian people is today an adult people, responsible and fully conscious of its responsibilities. In short, the Algerians are men of property.

If we have taken the example of Algeria to illustrate our subject, it is not at all with the intention of glorifying our own people, but simply to show the important part played by the war in leading them towards consciousness of themselves. It is clear that other peoples have come to the same conclusion in different ways. We know for sure today that in Algeria the test of force was inevitable; but other countries through political action and through the work of clarification undertaken by a party have led their people to the same results. In Algeria, we have realized that the masses are equal to the problems which confront them. In an under-developed country, experience proves that the important thing is not that three hundred people form a plan and decide upon carrying it out, but that the whole people plan and decide even if it takes them twice or three times as long. The fact is that the time taken up by explaining, the time ‘lost’ in treating the worker as a human being, will be caught up in the execution of the plan. People must know where they are going, and why. The politician should not ignore the fact that the future remains a closed book so long as the consciousness of the people remains imperfect, elementary and cloudy. We African politicians must have very clear ideas on the situation of our people. But this clarity of ideas must be profoundly dialectical. The awakening of the whole people will not come about at once; the people’s work in the building of the nation will not immediately take on its full dimensions: first because the means of communication and transmission are only beginning to be developed; secondly because the yardstick of time must no longer be that of the moment or up till the next harvest, but must become that of the rest of the world, and lastly because the spirit of discouragement which has been deeply rooted in people’s minds by colonial domination is still very near the surface. But we must not overlook the fact that victory over those weaknesses which are the heritage of the material and spiritual domination of the country by another is a necessity from which no government will be able to escape. Let us take the example of work under the colonial regime. The settler never stopped complaining that the native is slow. Today, in certain countries which have become independent, we hear the ruling classes taking up the same cry. The fact is that the settler wanted the native to be enthusiastic. By a sort of process of mystification which constitutes the most sublime type of separation from reality, he wanted to persuade the slave that the land that he worked belonged to him, that the mines where he lost his health were owned by him. The settler was singularly forgetful of the fact that he was growing rich through the death-throes of the slave. In fact what the settler was saying to the native was ‘Kill yourself that I may become rich’. Today, we must behave in a different fashion. We ought not to say to the people: ‘Kill yourselves that the country may become rich.’ If we want to increase the national revenue, and decrease the importing of certain products which are useless, or even harmful, if we want to increase agricultural production and overcome illiteracy, we must explain what we are about. The people must understand what is at stake. Public business ought to be the business of the public. So the necessity of creating a large number of well-informed nuclei at the bottom crops up again. Too often, in fact, we are content to establish national organizations at the top and always in the capital: the Women’s Union, the Young People’s Federation, Trade Unions, etc. But if one takes the trouble to investigate what is behind the office in the capital, if you go into the inner room where the reports ought to be, you will be shocked by the emptiness, the blank spaces, and the bluff. There must be a basis; there must be cells that supply content and life. The masses should be able to meet together, discuss, propose and receive directions. The citizens should be able to speak, to express themselves and to put forward new ideas. The branch meeting and the committee meeting are liturgical acts. They are privileged occasions given to a human being to listen and to speak. At each meeting, the brain in-creases its means of participation and the eye discovers a landscape more and more in keeping with human dignity.

The large proportion of young people in the under-developed countries raises specific problems for the government, which must be tackled with lucidity. The young people of the towns, idle and often illiterate, are a prey to all sorts of disintegrating influences. It is to the youth of an under-developed country that the industrialized countries most often offer their pastimes.

Normally, there is a certain homogeneity between the mental and material level of the members of any given society and the pleasures which that society creates for itself. But in under-developed countries, young people have at their disposal leisure occupations designed for the youth of capitalist countries: detective novels, penny-in-the slot machines, sexy photographs, pornographic literature, films banned to those under sixteen, and above all alcohol. In the West, the family circle, the effects of education and the relatively high standard of living of the working classes provide a more or less efficient protection against the harmful action of these pastimes. But in an African country, where mental development is uneven, where the violent collision of two worlds has considerably shaken old traditions and thrown the universe of the perceptions out of focus, the impressionability and sensibility of the young African are at the mercy of the various assaults made upon them by the very nature of Western culture. His family very often proves itself incapable of showing stability and homogeneity when faced with such attacks.

In this domain, the government’s duty is to act as a filter and a stabilizer. But the Youth Commissioners in under-developed countries often make the mistake of imagining their role to be that of Youth Commissioners in frilly developed countries. They speak of strengthening the soul, of developing the body, and of facilitating the growth of sportsmanlike qualities. It is our opinion that they should beware of these conceptions. The young people of an under-developed country are above all idle: occupations must be found for them. For this reason the Youth Commissioners ought for practical purposes to be attached to the Ministry for Labour. The Ministry for Labour, which is a prime necessity in an under-developed country, functions in collaboration with the Ministry for Planning, which is another necessary institution in under-developed countries. The youth of Africa ought not to be sent to sports stadiums but into the fields and into the schools. The stadium ought not to be a show place erected in the towns, but a bit of open ground in the midst of the fields that the young people must reclaim, cultivate and give to the nation. The capitalist conception of sport is fundamentally different from that which should exist in an under-developed country. The African politician should not be preoccupied with turning out sportsmen, but with turning out fully conscious men, who play games as well. If games are not integrated into the national life, that is to say in the building of the nation, and if you turn out national sportsmen and not fully conscious men, you will very quickly see sport rotted by professionalism and commercialism. Sport should not be a pastime or a distraction for the bourgeoisie of the towns. The greatest task before us is to understand at each moment what is happening m our country. We ought not to cultivate the exceptional or to seek for a hero, who is another form of leaden. We ought to uplift the people; we must develop their brains, fill them with ideas, change them and make them into human beings.

We once more come up against that obsession of ours — which we would like to see shared by all African politicians — about the need for effort to be well-informed, for work which is enlightened and free from its historic intellectual darkness. To hold a responsible position in an under-developed country is to know that in the end everything depends on the education of the masses, on the raising of the level of thought, and on what we are too quick to call ‘political teaching’.

In fact, we often believe with criminal superficiality that to educate the masses politically is to deliver a long political harangue from time to time. We think that it is enough that the leader or one of his lieutenants should speak in a pompous tone about the principle events of the day for them to have fulfilled this bounden duty to educate the masses politically. Now, political education means opening their minds, awakening them, and allowing the birth of their intelligence; as Cesaire said, it is ‘to invent souls’. To educate the masses politically does not mean, cannot mean making a political speech. What it means is to try, relentlessly and passionately, to teach the masses that everything depends on them; that if we stagnate it is their responsibility, and that if we go forward it is due to them too, that there is no such thing as a demiurge, that there is no famous man who will take the responsibility for everything, but that the demiurge is the people themselves and the magic hands are finally only the hands of the people. In order to put all this into practice, in order really to incarnate the people, we repeat that there must be decentralization in the extreme. The movement from the top to the bottom and from the bottom to the top should be a fixed principle, not through concern for formalism but because simply to respect this principle is the guarantee of salvation. It is from the base that forces mount up which supply the summit with its dynamic, and make it possible dialectically for it to leap ahead. Once again we Algerians have been quick to understand these facts, for no member of the government at the head of any recognized state has had the chance of availing himself of such a mission of salvation. For it is the rank-and-file who are fighting in Algeria, and the rank-and-file know well that without their daily struggle, hard and heroic as it is, the summit would collapse; and in the same way those at the bottom know that without a head and without leadership the base would split apart in incoherence and anarchy. The summit only draws its worth and its strength from the existence of the people at war. Literally, it is the people who freely create a summit for themselves, and not the summit that tolerates the people.

The masses should know that the government and the party are at their service. A deserving people, in other words a people conscious of its dignity, is a people that never forgets these facts. During the colonial occupation the people were told that they must give their lives so that dignity might triumph. But the African peoples quickly came to understand that it was not only the occupying power that threatened their dignity. The African peoples were quick to realize that dignity and sovereignty were exact equivalents, and, in fact, a free people living in dignity is a sovereign people. It is no use demonstrating that the African peoples are childish or weak. A government or a party gets the people it deserves and sooner or later a people gets the government it deserves.

Practical experience in certain regions confirms this point of view. It sometimes happens at meetings that militants use sweeping, dogmatic formulae. The preference for this shortcut, in which spontaneity and over-simple sinking of differences dangerously combine to defeat intellectual elaboration, frequently triumphs. When we meet this shirking of responsibility in a militant it is not enough to tell him he is wrong. We must make him ready for responsibility, encourage him to follow up his chain of reasoning and make him realize the true nature, often shocking, inhuman and in the long run sterile, of such over-simplification.

Nobody, neither leader nor rank-and-file, can hold back the truth. The search for truth in local attitudes is a collective affair. Some are richer in experience, and elaborate their thought more rapidly, and in the past have been able to establish a greater number of mental links. But they ought to avoid riding rough shod over the people, for the success of the decision which is adopted depends upon the coordinated, conscious effort of the whole of the people. No one can get out of the situation scot free. Everyone will be butchered or tortured; and in the framework of the independent nation everyone will go hungry and everyone will suffer in the slump. The collective struggle presupposes collective responsibility at the base and collegiate responsibility at the top. Yes; everybody will have to be compromised in the fight for the common good. No one has clean hands; there are no innocents and no onlookers. We all have dirty hands; we are all soiling them in the swamps of our country and in the terrifying emptiness of our brains. Every onlooker is either a coward or a traitor.

The duty of those at the head of the movement is to have the masses behind them. Allegiance presupposes awareness and understanding of the mission which has to be fulfilled; in short, an intellectual position, however embryonic. We must not voodoo the people, nor dissolve them in emotion and confusion. Only those under-developed countries led by revolutionary elites who have come up from the people can today allow the entry of the masses upon the scene of history. But, we must repeat, it is absolutely necessary to oppose vigorously and definitively the birth of a national bourgeoisie and a privileged caste. To educate the masses politically is to make the totality of the nation a reality to each citizen. It is to make the history of the nation part of the personal experience of each of its citizens. As President Sekou Toure aptly remarked in his message to the second congress of African writers:

“In the realm of thought, man may claim to be the brain of the world; but in real life where every action affects spiritual and physical existence, the world is always the brain of mankind; for it is at this level that you will find the sum total of the powers and units of thought, and the dynamic forces of development and improvement; and it is there that energies are merged and the sum of man’s intellectual values is finally added together.”

Individual experience, because it is national and because it is a link in the chain of national existence, ceases to be individual, limited and shrunken and is enabled to open out into the truth of the nation and of the world. In the same way that during the period of armed struggle each fighter held the fortune of the nation in his hand, so during the period of national construction each citizen ought to continue in his real, everyday activity to associate himself with the whole of the nation, to incarnate the continuous dialectical truth of the nation and to will the triumph of man in his completeness here and now. If the building of a bridge does not enrich the awareness of those who work on it, then that bridge ought not to be built and the citizens can go on swimming across the river or going by boat. The bridge should not be ‘parachuted down’ from above; it should not be imposed by a deusex machina upon the social scene; on the contrary it should come from the muscles and the brains of the citizens. Certainly, there may well be need of engineers and architects, sometimes completely foreign engineers and architects; but the local party leaders should be always present, so that the new techniques can make their way into the cerebral desert of the citizen, so that the bridge in whole and in part can be taken up and conceived, and the responsibility for it assumed by the citizen. In this way, and in this way only, everything is possible.

A government which calls itself a national government ought to take responsibility for the totality of the nation; and in an under-developed country the young people represent one of the most important sectors. The level of consciousness of young people must be raised; they need enlightenment. If the work of explanation had been carried on among the youth of the nation, and if the Young People’s National Union had carried out its task of integrating them into the nation, those mistakes would have been avoided which have threatened or already undermined the future of the Latin American Republics. The army is not always a school of war; more often, it is a school of civic and political education. The soldier of an adult nation is not a simple mercenary but a citizen who by means of arms defends the nation. That is why it is of fundamental importance that the soldier should know that he is in the service of his country and not in the service of his commanding officer, however great that officer’s prestige may be. We must take advantage of the national military and civil service in order to raise the level of the national consciousness, and to detribalize and unite the nation. In an under-developed country every effort is made to mobilize men and women as quickly as possible; it must guard against the danger of perpetuating the feudal tradition which holds sacred the superiority of the masculine element over the feminine. Women will have exactly the same place as men, not in the clauses of the constitution but in the life of every day: in the factory, at school and in the parliament. If in the Western countries men are shut up in barracks, that is not to say that this is always the best procedure. Recruits need not necessarily be militarized. The national service may be civil or military, and in any case it is advisable that every able-bodied citizen can at any moment take his place in a fighting unit for the defence of national and social liberties.

It should be possible to carry out large-scale undertakings in the public interest by using recruited labour. This is a marvellous way of stirring up inert districts and of making known to a greater number of citizens the needs of their country. Care must be taken to avoid turning the army into an autonomous body which sooner or later, finding itself idle and without any definite mission, will ‘go into politics’ and threaten the government. Drawing-room generals, by dint of haunting the corridors of government departments, come to dream of manifestoes. The only way to avoid this menace is to educate the army politically, in other words to nationalize it. In the same way another urgent task is to increase the militia. In case of war, it is the whole nation which fights and works. It should not include any professional soldiers, and the number of permanent officers should be reduced to a minimum. This is in the first place because officers are very often chosen from the university class, who could be much more useful elsewhere; an engineer is a thousand times more indispensable to his country than an officer; and secondly, because the crystallization of the caste spirit must be avoided. We have seen in the preceding pages that nationalism, that magnificent song that made the people rise against their oppressors, stops short, falters and dies away on the day that independence is proclaimed. Nationalism is not a political doctrine, nor a programme. If you really wish your country to avoid regression, or at best halts and uncertainties, a rapid step must be taken from national consciousness to political and social consciousness. The nation does not exist except in a programme which has been worked out by revolutionary leaders and taken up with fall understanding and enthusiasm by the masses. The nation’s effort must constantly be adjusted into the general background of underdeveloped countries. The battle-line against hunger, against ignorance, against poverty and against unawareness ought to be ever present in the muscles and the intelligences of men and women. The work of the masses and their will to overcome the evils which have for centuries excluded them from the mental achievements of the past ought to be grafted on to the work and will of all under-developed peoples. On the level of underdeveloped humanity there is a kind of collective effort, a sort of common destiny. The news which interests the Third World does not deal with King Baudouin’s marriage nor the scandals of the Italian ruling class. What we want to hear about are the experiments carried out by the Argentinians or the Burmese in their efforts to overcome illiteracy or the dictatorial tendencies of their leaders. It is these things which strengthen us, teach us and increase our efficiency ten times over. As we see it, a programme is necessary for a government which really wants to free the people politically and socially. There must be an economic programme; there must also be a doctrine concerning the division of wealth and social relations. In fact, there must be an idea of man and of the future of humanity; that is to say that no demagogic formula and no collusion with the former occupying power can take the place of a programme. The new peoples, unawakened at first but soon becoming more and more clear-minded, will make strong demands for this programme. The African people and indeed all under-developed peoples, contrary to common belief, very quickly build up a social and political consciousness. What can be dangerous is when they reach the stage of social consciousness before the stage of nationalism. If this happens, we find in under-developed countries fierce demands for social justice which paradoxically are allied with often primitive tribalism. The under-developed peoples behave like starving creatures; this means that the end is very near for those who are having a good time in Africa. Their government will not be able to prolong its own existence indefinitely. A bourgeoisie that provides nationalism alone as food for the masses fails in its mission and gets caught up in a whole series of mishaps. But if nationalism is not made explicit, if it is not enriched and deepened by a very rapid transformation into a consciousness of social and political needs, in other words into humanism, it leads up a blind alley. The bourgeois leaders of under-developed countries imprison national consciousness in sterile formalism. It is only when men and women are included on a vast scale in enlightened and fruitful work that form and body are given to that consciousness. Then the flag and the palace where sits the government cease to be the symbols of the nation. The nation deserts these brightly lit, empty shells and takes shelter in the country, where it is given life and dynamic power. The living expression of the nation is the moving consciousness of the whole of the people; it is the coherent, enlightened action of men and women. The collective building up of a destiny is the assumption of responsibility on the historical scale. Otherwise there is anarchy, repression and the resurgence of tribal parties and federalism. The national government, if it wants to be national, ought to govern by the people and for the people, for the outcasts and by the outcasts. No leader, however valuable he may be, can substitute himself for the popular will; and the national government, before concerning itself about international prestige, ought first to give back their dignity to all citizens, fill their minds and feast their eyes with human things, and create a prospect that is human because conscious and sovereign men dwell therein.

The Scourge Of Drugs And Rats In Our Midst Here In Mzantsi

Not All Of Us See politics in the same way... But we all Undergo The same Experiences...

According to Jose Marti:

"We must state categorically that there is no salvation for our people unless we turn our backs on all the models that charlatans of all types have tried to sell us for twenty years. There is no salvation outside of this rejection. There is no development separate from a rupture of this kind. All those new intellectual giants who are emerging from their slumber — awakened by the dizzying rise of billions of men in rags, aghast at the threat of this hunger-driven multitude weighing on their digestion — are beginning to rework their speeches.

"Far it be for me to ridicule the patient efforts of honest intellectuals who, because they have eyes to see, are discovering the terrible consequences of the devastation imposed on us by so-called specialists in the development of the Third World. My fear is to see the fruits of so much energy co-opted by Prosperos of all kinds who — with a wave of their magic wand - spirit us to world of slavery dressed up in today's "fashions.

"My fear is justified even more by the fact that the educated petty bourgeoisie of Africa - if not the entire world — is not prepared to give up its privileges, either because of intellectual laziness or simply because it has tasted the Western way of life. Because of these petty bourgeois forget that all genuine political struggle requires rigorous, theoretical debate, and they refuse to rise to the intellectual effort of conceiving new concepts equal to the murderous struggle that lies ahead of us. Passive and pathetic consumers, they wallow in terminology Fetishized by The West, Just As They Wallow In Western Whiskey And Champagne In Shady-Looking Lounges.

"Ever since the concepts of negritude and African Personality, now showing their age, the search for ideas that are genuinely new produced by the brains of our "great" intellectuals is in vain. Our vocabulary and our ideas come from elsewhere. Our professors, engineers, and economists are content to simply add color — from often the only things they brought back with them from European/American universities that have produced them are their degrees and their velvety adjectives and superlatives!(Sankara is confirming what Andre Gunder Frank was saying above).Sankara:

"It is both necessary and urgent that our trained personnel and those who work with the pen learn that there is no such thing as neutral writing. In these stormy times we cannot give today's and yesterday's enemies monopoly over "thought", "imagination," and "creativity."

"Before it too late - and it is already late - this elite, these men of Africa and and of the Third World, must come home to themselves, that is, to their societies and to the miseries we inherited. They must understand that the battle for ideology that serves the needs of the disinherited masses is not in vain. but they must understand, too, that they can only become credible on an international level y being genuinely creative - by "Portraying A Faithful Image Of Their People, An Image Conducive to Carrying Out Fundamental Change In Political And social Conditions And To Wrenching Our Countries From Foreign Domination And Exploitation, Which Leave Us No Other Perspective Than bankruptcy."

The citation above is an introduction to the piece I am posting below. The Drug is decimating our people and everything, worse than Aids, with the same powerful destructive effect/affect, and devastating impact on us: especially in the community I am about to talk about.Before I do, I want to preface my comments on the article above by saying: we might try very hard to paly the game of the Ostritch burying its head in the sand, but, we are even more exposed by doing that, and cannot even see and deal with the dangers facing us, today.

In the Township of Orlando East, the oldest one of all the various Towhsip that expand from it, drugs are wrcking havoc, and piercing at the core of the community more thanmany here on all the social Media are willing to accede or acknowledge. I have written extenisvely here on Facebbok about the drug pandemic that has assailed us, and promised will come back with new information and update about the Nyaope that is wiping us out. Seriously.

I have posted the fact that the ANC government has adcknowledged that 'drug abuse poses an even bigger threat to its young people(the children and youth of Mzatnsi), than the HIV/AIDS pandemic. I think both are huge, and are really furiously gnawing away at our people and us. Many disiss and deride these users, but many of us today, do not have to live with and amongst our African people in Orlando and witnessing first hand what is going down; what is happening to us on a much grander and macabre state that many really nor care to know.

When I werite such articles, the supposed-african-intelligentsia and other such opportunists, keep quite, and do not even do anything. Some pick up ideas and apply themselves and their newly found ideas intrying to do something for the people. Be as it may, this present article is present a report, news that is not reported, and stories from the Twonship of Orlando, that are swirling throughout the denizens of Orlando, but are tangentially known by the rest of our edumacated elite, that I will not stop writing about this sad chapters inour lives, but, am writing them for posterity, and to preserve them as historical record for our children.

There are two things I would like to take a look at, and lastly try and interrogate the whole social miasma as it is shaped, to date.

We have a rat-rodent problem which is being exacerbated by the corrugated iron shacks amde of boeards, pplastics and anything to build a dwelling for our people. Orland is very well-known to have legions of this structures in their yards, and these have created this formidable rat invasion and other causes that the people say bordering on conspiracy theories. Nonetheless, it is a fact that these rats and rodents are biting the people's dorrs, the children sleeping and creating a host of other ailments we have not even begun to deal with.

The most recent posts I have dropped on all sorts of Social Media, are geared towards us beginning to write about our real relaities and maybe many of us will begin to learn and see something that we had not even thought about, before. Creating a literature from the grassroot reporting as I am about to do, is one way to go, of the many that can used. I am going to make sure that this disaster that the people of Orland are facing, as I am onto this article, is exposed and written about as clearly, and as much in a raw way as I can conjure and write it down.

I have waxed political and theoritecal enough on the most recent two pieces I have posted here on Facebook and and elsewhere. Now, I want to delve into the environment I live and exist in and attempt to carricature its reality and effects/affects on us. What is happening as I am onto this article in our Township is unconscionable. There is no morelal justification as to what is happening to our youth, and the adult(children, baby population). This is a very serious thing happening to us here, and I think I will talk about it now.

Here in Orlando we are facing a deadly and serious drug epidemic. Drugs are so rife, that we have several drug potentates planted throughout the whole Township and in many contemprorary youth social events. Pretext of an event is a carte blance operation for the drug dealers and distributors. Drugs have a unique and not so sophisticated way the travel and are disseminated in our community here in the Kasi(Township).

We customarily call areas within soweto by the first nmbers sof their street, inone part of Orlandso, and others have their names for a general group of areas, but being Orland too. So, in the areas of the street known as '20, we have chaos that is repicated throughout Soweto and the whole hinterland of south Africa with similar ghettoes and decrepit life-style existences. These are the thro-back and cretion of Apartheid, and from these enclaves, we find similar scene and realits that I a describing below in Orlando.

This is new that is not new in the traditionally whtie owned media and nor in the dialoguue going on inside the country. What it is I am saying this is not important for no reporters ever take time to sit down and look at, participate in and try their darnest to biring this situation into light. We as the grown residient and former students who were involved in the 1970 Student Revolution, are looking at our own Townships, and what we are seeing is aome kind of carnage: Drugs destroying and decimating our famous, friends, socieity and the African race. This is what is happening nw as I am onto this article.

One of the general terms given to this devastating drug, it is called "Nyaope", a genric name for a killer grug that has left our youth being spooks and walking skeletons right infront of us. What a mess we are in as a people today in Orland.. So sad to see.. Heartbreaking and discouraging. What we have to live with everyday is ttaxing and seriously soul and spirit bruising. I thin one has to see it to grasp my meaning. I am groing to try and get some pictures, very soon. Optics do serve a relevant tool and techniqque in what we have to try and contain and at the moment, are at loss what we can or should do.

Nyaope Hell Holes And Meat Grinders

As I had said above, in the area of the strees known as 20(this includes street 19) in Orlando, there is this wheelchair drug dealer called Nkesi. He runs a drug-dealing den in plain sight with tight security to go. He hirelings are distitute and jolbess and lacking in education or dropout of both girls and boys, who, even go to his hove(home) which is a terrible for drug-addicted gil teenagers, who wou=uold do anything for a fix. That iis where we get to see many victims come out with HIV/AIDS, and other STDs that are still dismally afflicting and affecting our people, children, youth and elderly.

When you see these youth and grown pining and crazily craving the drug, they steal water taps, fened gates, copper wires in the wleectric poles and houses. They have a fvorite on their menu, which is these newPlasma Tv Screen. It is said if they do not sell them, they imbibe the white poweder they find therein, which is fatally destructive, but it is their high pick on the menu of drugs.

'Grootie'(Big Brother) or Ketsi, on his wheelechair is ;oatehed by many of the this youth, and those brave enough, tell all about him. They talk of his crude and druel ways of the treatment of his foot-soldiers who run the errands of buying drugs from HIV/Aids patients. Thessome of these people afflicted with the HIV/AIDS disease, collect their rations fromdifferent hospitals and outleets using various means, by moving from one place to the other. so that, In the end, they sell theessll these pills to the soldiers, who in turn sell them to the distributors snd providers of this Nyaope for a fee. This is the cyckle, of how this whole operation gets done.

Many people are affected in various dire and unknown ways. There are crews that operate in our midst in the trade of dealing or distributing drugs and raking in millions of Rands in their operations. The houses that they use for ssuch illicit and illegal operrations, are houses that the family in that house might have disappered or is complicit in the trade, and theyre is no order, and some like Ketsi, are security operations that everyone knows have installed within them the State Of The Art Cameras dirven by some new and sophisitcated technology. so that, as these mini-factories churn out corpses and walking spooks/zombies, we have to live with the scourge.

The police are on the top of the pecking totem pole and order The bribes they get makes them look askkance, and thir drug-lords are never arrested, but if they do, sit in front with the drive and are out in a matter of hours. Bodies of young girls are found strewn in the street corners or the middle of the road, having been ravaged and no one investigates, and yet the locals know who did it. They dare not talk, for even the innocent ones have been killed for no other reason than that they were innocent and were mever imvolvoed in anyting of the kind of operations I have briefly discussed above.

If one were to see thise kids and elderly, they have this enacing look, and the people say they are even more wild and daring/bold when they have not smoked their stuff. So tha, this leads them to carrying out dastardly deeds, murder and what itever it takes just to get a fix. They are jaded, ashen and very 'blackened' and never ever wash. the local lore has it that they no more beat them, once they catch themm stealing, they simply pour water over them, and they end up howling like wild creatures with all the water coming down on them. There is some kernel of truth in that, but as to the validity of the claim, the jury is still out on that one.

The behavior of these strung-up youth is appaling and galling. It is also sad to see a wasted life moving like an ogre or zombie out of whack and stone t the max. This soemthing to behold and it is devastating and crishing on some of our souls, mind and bodies. Our kids talk like they are having sppech deformities, and they are bent and very wild-eyed -looking and are always on the peopwl in search of another theft or robberies. Hooded thugs prowl the hood and rape and abduct and rob women as they are heaeded off to work in the wee hurs of the mornings. so many rapes, so many muggings, assaults, murders and all kids of undeclared war on the our politym, that I come here onto the Facebook collective and ask that something be done before it's too late, of which it is beginning to look like it is very late.

As a temoporary tangend, we have drug dealing in the coughing medicines sold in the Pharmacies or Chemist that ar e laced with cocaine, and now they are selling all over the place for around R15.00. Peoply are now addictied to this concotion, and it is market by a person, whose name appears of the cough drop for infoants, and only our Ancenstors know what they are putting in this old cures for babies. This is another issue I will be talking a bit about whenever I complete my researches.

In the manufactories little spooting and dotting the landscape, some of these youth are telling of how they have to wear latex gloves when makeing this Nyaope or some obscure drug mix-becasue it is hot and burns the king; they even volunteer information as the fact that they make it inside some tires, for they do not destruct just as quickly and for whatever reason. There's a whole of deadly mixes of rat poison, Dagga, some disiidnfectant and other natural salts and an assortment of everything to produce this drug or drugs of the same ilk.

As I am onto this piece, one of my friends just walked in complaining about the lack of electiricity for the pas so many hours. Hesays that rumours has it that a copper cable has been stolen, just as I am writing about this issue here on this piece. We are under an attack and deluge of thefts perpetrated by these Nyaope users, and that is why some houses and sections of Orland do not have electiricity now. People even steal water, that is in tose olacatons that have these meters. People are not working, and cannot afford pre-paid electricity, and metered water, which have been outsourced to forign corporation, and they are fleecing us so badly and leave us always in the cold and literally dry.

Both youthful but shredded-of youth, girls and boys are dropping out of schools in droves and headed into these drug dens, they are emaciated, blackened, dry, drolling and zombie-like spook-looking walking dead.The poor once youthful girls are smoking anything, have HIV/AIDS, seleep around with anyone and thoroughly abused sexually, sickly and bony looking with eyes drooping out of their sockets, very thin-looking, breasts sagging and wasted and faunt faces; hair falling off, this for us is watching death incaculable and very dumbing and numbing.

Then there's Madambi. The character too lives around the 20s Street, and he too is into high tech, eking noney out of the inhabitants, and he too is destroying the youth for he has created a well organized enterprise and has his henchmen, but he is not bigger than Nektsi.

Funked-Up society_ A People On The Precipe Of The Dark Hole

This brings us to the "Hell House". so dubbed becasue in it everything and anything happens or takes place. this is where the meat-grinder modus operandi is chirning out ccorpses Murders are routine and there i general sense of intimidation that is the norm. As for the Cops, they are nowehre to be seen, or the same thing happens, the thugs are let go and they bribe their way out. Fribery is another scourge that is endemic amongst law-enforcement-it has become a soert of a culture of laisez fair and a carte blance spirit that preils for some decades now.In the Noordgesig Colored Township, there are Old ladies who sell what they call "Space Cookies". These are bought and eaten by the students of Noordgesig High School, and this lieaves the kids High And somked out. Thus the persisiting problem of school drop-out rate I have just touched upon above.

At night, the poor working women, early risers and levaers headed to work in the dark, are susceptible to lurking murderers and rapist as they walk alone towards the required trasportation to work. The were patrols by local guys, but this has been sparse and sporadic at best, and the issues of betting paid take precedence before anything else, let alone local people's safety.

The other underlying but not oft looked at issue, is the fact that we as a people have already beed deadened and conditioned by apartheid that we are having a hard time coming out of that stalag and mental gulag. Ofcourse we have long been in the Concentration cap and prisons of apartheid functioning and operating like the aforementioned Stalag and Gulag meatgiirnders and psyche-hospitals that have cotributed immensely to our present state of being and existence.

We now have events called Mrikana, a ruse and guise to distribute the drugs and consume liquor and carry on sex by its organizers, that in the end, these place end up with armies of these drug dealers: footsoldeirs-who advertise and sell in these events, the illicit drugs and all forms of booze, and this ends up bieng a orgy of drugged-out and highly intoxicated youth, which is a setting for other things beyond the pale.

Ketsi's children and other such like people, have their children going to the best schools in the land. This is unconscionable. This Ketsi self-styled potentate drive all sorts of cars(sits on a wheelchair, mind you) and has many girlfriends.. go figure. We have no power to fight against these interlopers, and destroyers of our yuth and communties. There needs to be something the people of goodwill here in Mzatnsi can do. This is going on as I speak and is not abating.

It is a fact that the drug has decimated families, youth and elderly people. It has left destruction and ruin in the townships throughout Soweto, but in this case, I will focus on Orlando East.

Drugs like Cocaine and Mandrax pills started proliferating in the Township around the early eighties and has now become a pandemic throughout different communities of Africans, Coloreds and Whites. In Orlando East(Soweto), the inhabitants have been watching with dread and fear as their youth became zombies, sick, and died from this drug-which, when imbibed, makes its victims froth at the mouth and tear-up incessantly, walking unsteadily-zombie-like walk and creates an ever increasing crave, leading to all sorts of crime that has this drug-besieged Township of Orlando teetering on the brink of lunacy and genocide.

This is a problem which has been thus far so utterly ignored that the residents of Orlando, rallied by the members of the CPF(Community Police Forum which was formed by the local Orlando station police force) along with and run by the local residents-who patrol and try to keep crime at a low minimum. On the second Major Saturday of August 2013, a coalition of local Orlando residents, Their CPF Team and several policemen in their cars descended on the drug dens dotting the Township in each and every street.

As the article above aptly shows we take note on this part of the article that the same sound of singing, became protestations when the coalition I had described above descended onto to the drug houses and dens within Orlando East. A very disturbing picture began to emerge.

The Jo'burg Metro police gave permission to to the marchers,a nd provided the police force, and it was explained to the marchers that the agreement, and permission to approach the drug dealers was given. With placards and a huge number of people began advancing to the 'known' Drug dens, and those who sold from street corners or shop stoops.

The people went to the houses, containers used as phone phones booths and other illicit activities including the selling of "Nyaope"; The mob advised the police that the Zimbabweans, Nigerians, Pakistanis, and some Colored[along with locals] should be arrested and searched for drugs. In some houses in Orlando East, they found drugs on the bodies of Old grannies, who were used as carriers.

Heading the large group was Councilor Matlaka(Councilor of Dube), along with 8(eight) police cars, about 15 policemen ant eh CPF patrollers were about 30, and the rest of the group consisted of a large number of undisclosed members of the local resident. Five young boys were arrested and were found to have drugs on their persons. Some of these dealers were women who had come from the rural areas and were very secretive as to who their suppliers were. Others were resistant to the ob but caved in when they saw the mob's menacing bearing and intent.

In the part of the Township called "Roma"[which is still Orlando East], two houses were searched and drug paraphernalia was found; they also found a lot of stolen IDs and Marijuana in bags, along with credit cards and guns. Some of this stuff was found under the beds in some of these houses, or carelessly strewn all ver the dirty and unkempt houses.

In another areas of Orlando around a store called "Goodluck" several houses were without owners, and all sorts of evil and illicit and sordid activities have been taken place in plain sight and nobody could anything about it.. In one "Pink" Big House, the occupants tried to run away, but were apprehended had had on their person both 'Nyaope' and Marijuana and two guns.

Maponya - (The Nyaope Potentate whose fiefdom is Orlando East)

In the area around the Grounds and Tennis Courts(Known Generally as 'Escort'(Still in Orlando East) is the headquarters of the Nyaope sales. Hoards of youth and well-off middle class Africans, along with cops(who are in the pay of a guy, Mgeve, in her article, identified as "Maponya"), has in his employ, his grandmother, and siblings-the Police and local ANC honchos. One of the 'carriers' who serves his customers on his behalf, was found with six plastics bags and she was in a close to comatose state..

The locals who were in the march, alerted the police that Maponya's grandmother had all the drugs hidden in her body, underneath her clothes. She was very rude and arrogant and dared the police to touch. She was arrested and searched on arrival in that the police station On seeing what's happening, Maponya attempted to escape, put on a disguise but the citizens saw to it that he was apprehended.

When he was brought into the parked police cars, he insisted that he should sit in the front with the police driver. All the time he was wagging his finger and berating the police, and none responded to his charade. From this incident it was apparent that the Police Commander and his side-kicks(police grunts) were in the pay of this lilliputian drug potentate.

The community, who have been seeing the police and other people of note come to buy or get paid by him over a period of time, lost their cool. They threatened to riot and demanded that Maponya be put in the back of the squad car with all other arrestees. Eventually he was put in the back with all other small-time drug dealers, and he was clearly miffed about this and he carried on his protestations.

What got him off the hook, was the directive the police said that he could not be arrested if he did not have any drugs on him. Those who worked for him refused to snitch or rat out on him. They all denied having received or brought this stuff from him-and the junkies were intimidated into denying that he supplied or sold them the "Nyaope".. This technicality, help set him free and he was released without being charged.

The crowd moved to an area in Orlando too, called 'Paramount', and they went into the ramshackle shacks filling up the yards of most houses in Orlando, and in them they found and routed drug dens , prostitution harems, and 3 people were arrested there-considered to be the main bosses. As far as one can tell, "Nyaope" is sold in each and every street in Orlando East.

The denizens of Orlando were disgruntled and felt betrayed, because everyone knew who(Maponya) was really distributing drugs wholesale in the Township, and he walked scot-free, due to a flimsy technicality in the law so that, in the end, the people wanted the Minister of the Police, Mrs. Raphiyega and the government to become involved.

The people finally decided to call a meeting in a week of two, to report back to the community these events, and have decided to take the case to the Provincial government and they want the Premier to take this case over.Most of those residents who partook in the raid, have to go around the Townhsip armed

"Drug And Chemical Warfare On the People Of Mzantsi"

Below I will link an article which no longer talks about "Nyaope, but "Whoonga" which is a potent and highly addictive mixture of Marijuana, heroin, and HIV Medications. The same with "Nyaope" and other concoctions, which also include the life-saving pills for HIV-Aids, and literally makes waste of the users and death, sickness, crime, homicide, rape and so forth have spiked. This is a crisis, and it needs to be addressed aggressively, or we stand to loose not only generations, but a whole nation of people high on home-made designer drugs which are decimating communities throughout South africa with unequaled impunity.

Until the day we Africans of Mzantsi stop thinking of and for our individual selves only, until they day we Africans of Mzantsi say enough is enough; and, until we come to our senses and go and see for ourselves what I am talking about or everyone is writing about what these drugs are doing to us, our people, relatives and communities[Nation], we will forever be in our cocoons and do nothing, and we are clearly facing something more dangerous than HIV AIDs(Which is still battering and wiping the core of our communities), we will in the end taken-snuffed by the genocide we are now facing. There is more to the story as to how these drugs came into the country, and I will be writing an article tracing the origins of this scourge and addiction.

We are really much better than this, lest we forget that.... We can all 'wax political' to our egos content.. But this, is not going away, instead, it is threatening our very existence as the indigenous of the country of South Africa... We are in the clutches of a very dangerous and deadly grip of a drug epidemic whose likes has never been seen before in our country. We need to begin to help ourselves and come to these communities and route the drugs and dealers consistently and brutally, or it is they, as we are seeing, who will run our Townships(they already are) or either its us who will have the finally say, and control and run our townships and communites... Whither Mzantsi.....

Sankara's Perspective And View Of Change

By Revisiting Sankara's musings and postulation about Volta, it's like Us here in Mzantsi looking at Ourselves in a Mirror provided by Sankara and seeing ourselves in what he is describing. This is very important that we begin to talk about issues that affect us tremendously, than waxing political and saying nothing in the process.

Reading up on Sankara below, is a lesson about Mzatnsi, foreseen and foretold by Sankara as no one else would. The least thing most of us can do is to Read what Sankara has to say, than just try and regurgitate some maxims of four or five sennteces he has uttered. This is very important, for in his speech, we see Mzantsi with is clothes taken off-meaning, we cannot escape the truth and reality that Sankara is talking about below, and reading it will help us begin to put things into a very needed and essential African-centered perspective, so sorely needed in Mzantsi today.

This whole charade has been going on for the past 20 years. The promises that have been made in the past elections are hammered into the peoples hearts and minds. Right now, as they knew it would be, they are going to vote and give ANC four-more-plus year to try and rule

The elections are finally here, and many people say, "Mmmm, you wait and see when people have to make their own decisions about who to vote for-I tell you, they are going to vote ANC, hands down… You ask why? Well, what else is there in this cesspool — (said in blip-able Kasi/Township slang)… "Squat!" "Vokol!"(Nothing!)

I have been posting articles to try and present an alternative input and point of view into the talking points about the elections in Mzantsi. In this issue, I will go cull from what Sankara reminds us about our own situation, today-which is very eerie and spot on about our own present situation of 20 years of neocolonial rule; Sankara was summing up the past neocolonial rule in his country"

"Sankara":

"The task of constructing a new society cleansed of all ills that keep our country in a state of poverty and economic and cultural backwardness, will be long and Hard. ... The decision by French colonial imperialism to cut its losses was a victory for our people over the forces of foreign oppression and exploitation. From the masses' point of view, it was democratic reform, while from that of imperialism, it was a change in the forms of domination and exploitation of our people.

"This change nevertheless resulted in a realignment of classes and social layers and the formation of new classes. In alliance with the backward forces or traditional society, and in total contempt of the masses, whom they had used as a springboard to power, the "petty-bourgeoisie intelligentsia" of that time set about laying the political and economic foundations for new forms of imperialist domination and exploitation.

"Fear that the struggle of the popular masses would become more radical and lead to a genuine revolutionary solution was the basis for the choice made by imperialism. Henceforth, it would maintain its stranglehold over our country and perpetuate the exploitation of our people through "national intermediaries." The entire process of organizing neocolonial society would be nothing more than a simple operation of substituting one form for another.

"In Essence, neocolonial society and colonial society differed not at all. The colonial administration was replaced by a "neocolonial administration" identical to it in every respect-[The ANC]. The colonial army was replaced by a neocolonial army with the same characteristics, the same functions, and the same role of safeguarding the interests of imperialism and its colonial allies.[Here's Looking At South Africa After Apartheid]

"The colonial school system was replaced by neocolonial schools, which pursued the same goals of alienating our children from our country and reproducing a society that would primarily serve the interests of imperialism and secondarily, those of its local lackeys and allies.With the Support and blessing of imperialism, Voltaic(Mzantsi) nationals set about organizing the systematic plunder of our country.

"With the crumbs of this pillage that fell to them, they were transformed, little by little, into a truly parasitic bourgeoisie that could no longer control its voracious appetite. Driven solely by personal interest, they no longer hesitated at even the most dishonest means, engaging in massive corruption, embezzlement of public funds and properties,influence-peddling and real estate speculation, and practicing favoritism and nepotism.

"This is what accounts for all the material and financial wealth they accumulated from the sweat of the toilers. Not content to live-off the fabulous incomes derived from the shameless exploitation of their ill-begotten wealth, they fought tooth and nail to capture their political posts that would allow them to use the state apparatus to further their exploitation ad underhanded dealings

"Hardly a year passed without them treating themselves to extravagant vacations abroad. Their children deserted the country's schools for prestigious educations in other countries(Or special private prestigious schools in the country-as in our case in South Africa)… "All the resources of the state were mobilized to guarantee them, at the slightest illness, expensive care in luxury hospitals in foreign countries(and grand hospitals/expensive exclusive health care here in Mzantsi).

"All this has unfolded in full view of the honest,courageous, and hardworking Voltaic(Mzantsi) people, a people mired nonetheless in the most squalid misery. White Upper Volta(Big Cities of South Africa) are a paradise for the wealthy minority, it is a barely tolerable hell for the majority, the People.

"A part of this big majority, the wage earner, despite the fact that they are assured a regular income, suffer the constraints and pitfalls of capitalist consumer society. Their income is completely consumed before they have even touched it.

"This vicious cycle goes on and on, with no perspective of being broken."Through their respective trade unions, the wage earners engage in struggles to improve their living conditions(Marikana, for one). Sometimes the scope of those struggles forces concessions from the neocolonial authorities. But they simply give with one hand what they take back with the other.

"Thus a 10 percent wage increase is announced with great fanfare, only to be immediately taxed, wiping out the expected beneficial effects of the first measure. After five, six, or seven months, the workers finally understand the swindle and mobilize for new struggles. Seven months is more than enough for the reactionaries in power to catch their breadth and devise new schemes. Thus, in this endless fight, the worker always comes out the loser.

"The peasants, the 'wretched of the earth,' are also a component of this big majority. These peasants are expropriated, robbed, molested, imprisoned, ridiculed, and humiliated everyday, yet they are the ones whose labor creates wealth. The country's economy stays afloat despite its weakness, thanks to their productive labor. It is from this labor that the elite that the Gauteng's, Cape Townians are their Eldorado, and this sweetens their lives(just adjusted/added terms/names here)

"Yet, it is the peasants who suffer most from the lack of buildings, roads, health facilities, and services. These peasants,c creators of national wealth, are the ones who suffer the most from lack of schools an educational material(Lost books of Limpopo), for their children.

"It is their children who will swell the ranks of the unemployed after a brief stint in classrooms poorly adapted to the realities of this country. It is among the peasants that the illiteracy rate is highest - 98 percent. Those who most need to learn, so that the output of their productive labor can increase, are the very ones who benefit the least from expenditures for health care, education, and technology."The peasant youth — who have the same attitudes as all youth, greater sensitivity to social injustice, and greater desire for progress — finally leave the country-side in revolt, thus depriving it of its most dynamic elements.

"Their initial impulse drives these youth to the large urban centers(Name All The Big cities In Mzantsi). There they hope to find better-paying jobs and to benefit from the advantages of progress.The lack of jobs pushes them to idleness, with all its characteristic vices. Finally, so as not to end up in prison, they seek salvation by going abroad(Local African cities)… where the most shameless humiliation and exploitation await them. But does Voltaic(Mzantsi) society leave them any choice?

"Stated succinctly, this is the situation in our country after twenty-three years of neocolonialism: a paradise for some and hell for the rest…" [Note! That's Mzantsi.. Period!]

By The Way, When Was This Written Or Spoken? It was Written And Spoken On October 2, 1983, presented by Sankara on behalf of the National Council of the Revolution in a national radio and television broadcast…

So It is Here in Mzantsi(South Africa). All What Sankara said above, is what we are — it is sort of like 'looking into the mirror and seeing oneself staring back at you'. I could not have said it better than the great President, Sankara. Everything he just said, is all taking place in our country, and has been happening for the past 20 years. I think it is about time we learned from Sankara that we are not unique in Africa with our Shamocracy/Democrazy… Many countries have gone through these shenanigans from their neocolonial rulers(in our case,today, with the ANC).

Reading Sankara, will help us realize as to what is happening and what is really wrong with the way we see and do things. What I am saying is, in preparation for the coming elections, four years from now, we need to learn and act in different ways. For me, closing this whole hullaballoo about voting, I have decided to post the thoughts and experiences of Sankara, to be my keynote speaker as we are headed to the conclusion of voting. It is looking beyond that that I utilize Sankara, so that, if anyone four years from now can read this article, and identify all the things Sankara said in 1983, in 2018 or so, it means then we will have had one extra year from what Sankara has been 23 years of neocolonization, we will have learned nothing, and we will be repeating the same mistakes and so on, without no end.

My take of the election has been well-captured by Sankara above, and I aim to begin to learn from what he is said about Volta in 1983, to what is happening to us now in May, 2014… Let's all get to work, we have a lot of hard-work ahead...

Here's Looking At You...

Aphorisms:

"Leaders Who Plan For An African Future, But Consider Knowledge Of The Past Irrelevant, Can Only Be Presumed To Be Harboring The Colonialist View Of the African Past. It Was The Wisdom Of Our Fathers to Emphasize That Each Present Generation Owes Obligations And Responsibilities To Both the Ancestors And the Generations yet Unborn...-By J.F.A. Ajayi

Thomas Sankara, often referred to as “Africa’s Che Guevara” was the president of Burkina Faso from 1983 to 1987. He seized power in a 1983 popularly supported coup, with the goal of eliminating corruption and the dominance of the former French colonial power.

Sankara’s foreign policies were centered around anti-imperialism, with his government eschewing all foreign aid because, as he often said, “he who feeds you, controls you.” He pushed for debt reduction and nationalized all land and mineral wealth, averting the power and influence of the IMF and World Bank.

His domestic policies were focused on preventing famine with agrarian self-sufficiency and land reform, prioritizing education with a nation-wide literacy campaign, and promoting public health by vaccinating 2.5 million children. And his was the first African government to publicly recognize the AIDS epidemic as a major threat to Africa.

Thomas Sankara was an extraordinary man.- He outlawed female genital mutilation, forced marriages, and polygamy and was the first African leader to appoint women to major cabinet positions and actively recruit them for the military. A motorcyclist himself, he formed an all-woman motorcycle personal guard.- He encouraged women to work outside the home and stay in school even if pregnant.- He launched a nation-wide public health ‘Vaccination Commando’ a state run program that in a period of only 15 days in early November 1984, completed the immunization of 2.5 million children against meningitis (a world record), yellow fever and measles. This operation was so successful in that children in neighbouring countries like the Ivory Coast and Mali were sent to Burkina Faso for free immunization that helped curtail high rates of infant and child mortality.- He sold off the government fleet of Mercedes cars and made the Renault 5 (the cheapest car sold in Burkina Faso at that time) the official service car of the ministers. He lowered his salary, as President, to only $450 a month and limited his possessions to a car, four bikes, three guitars, and a refrigerator.- He planted over ten million trees to halt the growing desertification of the Sahel and established an ambitious road and rail construction program to “tie the nation together.”- He was known for jogging unaccompanied through the capital city in his track suit and posing in his tailored military fatigues with his mother-of-pearl pistol. And when asked why he didn’t want his portrait hung in public places, as was the norm for other African leaders, he said ”there are seven million Thomas Sankaras.”

Sankara’s revolutionary policies for self-reliance and defiance against the neoliberal development strategies imposed by the West made him an icon to many supporters of African liberation. But his policies alienated and antagonized the vested interests of the small but powerful Burkinabe middle class, the tribal leaders who he stripped of the traditional right to forced labor and tribute payments, and the foreign financial interests in France and their ally Ivory Coast.

Compaore and Sankara

On October 15, 1987 Sankara was killed by an armed militia of twelve officials in a coup d’état organized by Compaore. Sankara’s body was dismembered and buried in an unmarked grave. Compaore immediately took power, overturning most of Sankara’s policies. Compaore reportedly ousted Sankara because he believed that his revolutionary policies were jeopardizing Burkina Faso’s relationship with France and Ivory Coast. Sankara and Compaore were not only colleagues, they were childhood friends.

-This is why ‘Bad Karma’ should be Blaise Compaore’s middle name. He is a ruthless man who orchestrated the brutal assassination of his best friend.

-Yet he is the man routinely designated by the international community to act as a ’mediator’ to help resolve African conflicts…

What Is Going On Here In Our Country We Call Mzantsi... Hmmmm...?

Are We In Control Or Out Of Control? Di Ntshang? Zikhiphani for Ma-What? (What's Going On?)

Rumination About Our State Of OurNation - Not Not -Yet-Developed-Developing African South African Nation...

Today, within the African milieu of Mzantsi, there's a paucity of serious dialogue by those who lead the discussion/talking points, and all those that Partake and end up Leading the nationgroups, as individuals, but like a collective. Some call this socialism, others call it Communism… I call it National Community Communalism.

What is that? Well, one can harken back into our various 10 cultures of Mzantsi and cull from it common elements of behavior, actions, talks, languages, music, dances, clothing, culture, history, customs, traditions, sacred rites and practices, philosophy, psychology, sociology, and the whole human endeavor that we are part of on this earth-we will then begin the infant stutter-steps required to comprehensively control and work with our forlorn, destitute and under siege people to be sure we know what we are doing. Forming One Nation.

We have to begin somewhere down the time line of our existing in South Africa and think/act along these lines, and act as we think and know. There are no half measures or short-cuts here. Otherwise we might as well as all Shut Up and ditch the farce and attempt to keep on writing and posting the farcial inconsequential and pompous utterances which do nothing for us. I repeat this in another way: We better get down seriously.

What's my schtick? Well, for now. I will defer to Jose Marti:

"An ignorant people can be deceived by superstition and become servile. An instructed people will always be strong and free. An ignorant man is on his way to becoming a beast, and a man instructed in knowledge and conscience is on his way to being a god. One must not hesitate to choose between a nation of gods and a nation of beasts."

"The best way to "defend our rights is to know them well"; in so doing one has faith and strength; every nation will be unhappy in proportion to how poorly educated are its inhabitants. "A Nation Of Educated Men Will Always Be A Nation Of Free Men". Education is the only means of being saved from slavery. "A Nation Enslaved To Men Of Another Nation Is As repugnant As Being Enslaved To The Men Of One's Own".

This is the crux and nub of our miseries. Jose encaspulated it brilliantly and simply. The lesson we must take from it is its simplicity and manifestation likewise. When we talking about our African reality, I apologize to no one, and will state simply: It has to be done-What? Educating and Instructing our African people-No matter how long it takes. That's my take on my life and my reason to be in existence.

I really am not interested, at this point in my life, in caring who reads or does not read, nor cares about what I am saying talking about Africans of Mzatnsi-neither will I compromise my zeal and passion to see to it that my own African people begin, again, get to see the importance of education and our controlling and determining our destiny on in this earthly spheroid, blasting through eternity(thought so, for now).

In our present state and existence as the Africans of Mzantsi, there is this gnawing feeling that we have been invaded and are being pushed-out and some places occupied by non-indigenous African people, and when we utter whimpering cry about the fact that this is our country and land, are dismissed and put down by our African brothers.

This is a fact and it is going on as I am onto this piece above. What I am saying then is, I am not going to apologize to anyone when it comes to trying to cobble together our Country and Nation, and its people, in the Sobukwe sense of the meaning and reality/philosophy.

What's happening? I then ask. Di Ntshang? Zikhiphani For Ma What(What's Happening?) Why fore/Whytofore? This to me is interrogating our people's life, mental health, basic human rights and these Rights guaranteed under the Bill Of Rights Of South Africa-of which, many of our people do not know, but have a general sense about it-but as to what they mean-that still needs to be seen. We have to take ourselves seriously and care for each other in the Bikoan sense of creating a brave and new Human Face here in our country-amongst our African people.

Biko has said it best: "Ours is a Human Centered Culture-It Has Man At and As Its center." This is so true and relevantly correct and resonating with many of us, that it becomes easy to imbibe, digest, analyze and apply and make it real without any effort for our African people.

For instance, the Facebook Social Media is well adaptable to our cultural style and practice/orality, that we should by now be prolific in this medium in creating memes and zines that are from the ground up. Meaning, if you work amongst our people, you end up talking and acting like our people and you will only become relevant if what you say they can identify with and within oneself, own people, being themselves, and see them looking at themselves and you as important parts of what is being said about them/him/her-Nation.

This is a very sensitive and dangerous time in our country of Mzantsi, and we still have to talk to what is really taking place. We know that our aquifers are being dried up throughout our country; our underground rivers are being redirected to the burgeoning coal mines along the Limpopo; the new gold minefields that are,desparately business in need of water to develop are drying up our rivers.

We know that there is this fracking issue along the Karoo lands; insufficient housing for millions that are still dwelling in shacks and ramshackle corrugated iron structures that are freezers and fire hazards in the Winter; and are boiling ovens and water dredged in the rainy seasons. So that, whilst the hospitals are no more training competent nurses/too many agencies are fly-by-night training institutions; poorly equiped and badly untrained teachers: no more teachers colleges are built; we are in the rut.

This is a time when we see the real true gendarme element bare its creed. Meaning, we know that the government is useless for and to us. We have heard it in gossip-the type of yellow journalism that characterize our newspapers, with the macabre stories and Believe-it-Or-Not type of reportage, our information is serviced by this type of sensationalism, that in the end, it ends up as useless data. I have written extensively about the South African Press elsewhere, I will simply note that this is something we should be deciphering thoroughly by now, and knowing what we are dealing with.

Television is not worse for wear-Or maybe it is. I mean, it is the syndicated productions from America, who have already and installed infrastructure in South Africa to accommodate their splurging and entrenching their TV-style and American News Dissemination octopus that this too is one pressing thing we should be learning more about, understanding, and setting ourselves up to deal with it to suit our own needs and expectation.

Be that as it may be, our Culture is well-suited to maneuver and manipulate this modern Media and Modern Men/Women. Does this Mean becoming a poor copy of what our Masters are? No. It simply means we have the ability and capability to transform and morph as we see fit in today's techno society and environments.

We have our own narratives which we can work with, and these have an alluring effect and affect on our people, tremendously. I am more interested in the listening habits and media preferences of our people, their wanting to know what the programs are about. I know about those themes of the stories-My interest is to learn and work with our people in transforming present-day media int their own aesthetic holistic understanding of the content and media/medium.

So that, then, if we can configure the whole strata/sector and the whole Nation thingy thingamajig, I think we can begin to get used to thinking in real, coherent and revolutionary changing ways.

It is not enough to only rehash what happened in the June 1976 Revolution, but also we must know and see in ourselves and society what has this Revolution of June 16th 1976 has spawned in us, we will then know truly and surely that it was successful. But until then, if we are going to be like I am about to write about below, then, we are in serious trouble we the people of Mzantsi.

Ziikhipani For Ma What? (Say What? What's Happening)…

Our Township parlance is one way I think I have been particularly enamored with. It is a great shorthand and conceptualizing and discerning phenomena whatever it is. It is a suave way to speak and think, and the language itself is 21st century, and it is as old and different as the regions themselves throughout South Africa are. I am in the Region of Gauteng and in Soweto, and in my particular Hood, we have evolved an extensive and language system that is as urbane as any in any Metropolis around the world.

There are many amongst us who are averse to such palaver. I am not. I consider all African languages throughout South Africa to be a true reflection of the different regions we live in, and perceive no difference, as such with these. I only see diversity that has not been an addressed aggressively from an African centered and clearly informed perspective. I touch up on this, briefly, below.

Our own local motion and intonation and style is well-suited to any other in the world. It is what we are talking about and dealing that helps shape our consciousness, and make us efficiently erudite-at all times. We are just as well equipped and adapt/adept in our colloquialism and annunciation/pronunciation and fkuently eloquent in our Township Slang that I find it very useful as tool of discourse and rapport amongst ourselves. I think that in talking the way our people speak, we become one with them, and we are on the same page with our People.

But this does not end there. It is a means through which we will have to apply ourselves to the decrepit given the conditions and our existential reality. Our education of ourselves and our people for one. This is still eluding our understanding as to what we are doing here and with our education-evenlong after June 16th 1976. Then there's the problem that we the people of Mzantsi have not really defined what and how we want our education to be.

This is tripping everything we might try to do. Our being educated in our own country, by other people either than us, where our education has been outsourced and in many cases in the hands of the Western Public relations officers and huge corporation-this is unconscionable. When we see the education we are fed today, the commercialization of our education, and in the process, you see the local jargon that we have 'Private Schools" or Model C School, and of course there are abandoned and forgotten Township School-Apartheidized Education Post Neo Colonialism-One comes to realize that we are in a serious mess

Josse Marti states:

'Popular Education does not mean education of the poorer classes exclusively, but rather that all classes in the nation, tantamount to saying the people-be well educated. Just as there is no reason why the rich are educated and not the poor, what reason is there for the poor to be educated and not the rich. They are all the same.'

This is what we African people fail to understand that we have the power of doing for our own education-Everything good and excellent. We do not have the necessary materials to be able to work on such matters. because at the forefront of everything we do: Money/Cash nexus is King.

But many of us are still hung up on the fact that our children will be better educated in these expensive suburban schools, when many of Soweto Kids are hauled in private cars and buses to be dropped at those schools into the White people's enclaves, to be edumacated, then, when they come out out of the grist mill of those school factories, they serve no purpose to us. as an African people...

What we have conveniently forgotten is the fact that many of us no more want to do what Jose Marti talks about in short below:

"Every man when he arrives upon this earth has a right to be educated, and then , in payment, the duty to contribute to the education of others."

My thing, therefore, is that, Education as we should be applying and implementing it, should be decided by us as to what that type of activity will be for all and sundry. If we are going to choose the dictation of other people's aphorisms and their edumacating our African polity and collective to get certain ideas forward and forth, that is not a good thing among u, and we should be doing our own educating of ourselves, but that should be not the 'only' thing we should be doing. There are many things we should be doing to begin to cobble our education/nation, not what we are seeing being done to us African preople of south south Africa: Dumbing Us Down.

Books are expensive. The Internet is very expensive and takes a lot of money out of the poor people's budgets and lines up the pocket if International Kapital.[Das Kapital]. It is now more harder to have a broader mass informed society, like we have an army of the captured poor being denied access to all things education and instruction, along with knowledge gathering. This is a tactic and technique we should be cognizant to by now

The whole system of education has been muddled and it is worse than it was during Apartheid. It is a well-known fact that the Fat-Cats in our midst take their children to even more exclusive school, overseas. They have been doing it for years. And now we have a cadre of children, now grown up, and are foreign to us their parents, societies and nation. Meanwhile, we have an army of youth schooled in delapidated and poor schools

We should not be afraid to tell each other of our vices and follies-faults and foibles… But at least be honest enough to badly want per see some form of change in our life-time. Right now, everything is chaos in our midst, and we not do not have any coherent ideas/strategy as to What's To Be Done?(A la Lenin).Well, for us today, that is the conundrum. We all come to fore here on Social Media with various ideas but our own. That is a recipe for disasters, right there.

We can talk or wax about this or that overseas, but less of that and so on about ourselves here at home. It is because many of us want to be what we are not-we can only be what we dreate ourselves to be. There are many people in our Townships who think that they are Americans. This is very distracting and delaying our discovering ourselves fully. I have said this before… Yourself is a sure bet in tackling the vicissitude of life, unlike some phony-baloney of a misperceived and confused self.

We will never be Americans… Instead, we still have a lot in our plate to contend with and become Africans of South South Africa-without apologizing to no one for saying so-nor copy-cating anyone. In the same vein, Cultural Pride is no misdemeanor nor high crime anywhere on earth for present-day humans..

Since we are at it, thus far, it behooves me to remind all reading this that we are a people who are coping and recovering from the most devastating form of slavery and oppression known to man-to date. I do not have to digress in to that story and history, but lest it be forgotten, that there are other nations state that declare that they will not forget the heinous crimes committed on themMeanwhile, we, still today, are having to live with the raw reminders of our decrepit existence, now exacerbated by quislings and cutthroat vulture capitalist, who have melanin-like the majority of us.

Jose Marti Noted:

"An ignorant people can be deceived by superstition and become servile. An instructed people will always be strong and free. An ignorant man is on his way to becoming a beast, and a man instructed in knowledge and conscience is on his way to being a god. One must not hesitate to choose between a nation of gods and a nation of beasts.

"The best way to "defend our rights is to know them well"; in so doing one has faith and strength; every nation will be unhappy in proportion to how poorly educated are its inhabitants. "A Nation Of Educated Men Will Always Be A Nation Of Free Men". Education is the only means of being saved from slavery. "A Nation Enslaved To Men Of Another Nation Is As repugnant As Being Enslaved To The Men Of One's Own".

We cannot escape this truism above. We are all seeing this play out right in front of our own eyes with our present leaders. What Jose was talking about in 1878, was that, up to that time he wrote that, that was the real zeitgeist. From his times, those of Jose, to oour present reality, we have not yet even realized this truth, and today in Mzantsi, we keep on electing those so-called leaders to rule over us and we end up fighting them timex. We paddling the stationary wheel to no end.

This gotta stop, and a more coherent and very focused efforts have to become implemented, anew.How many times are we going to go through this democratic farce? Mmmmm? Are we going to repeat the oft seen scene without change of optics?

This is a wonderment on my part that we have come, again, towards celebrating an event that was transformative, June 16 1976, and we are still in more or less the same situation, and the ANC has gone to lengths to call it "Youth Day"? What that? How semantics have been deployed here, has numbed us to obsolescence, to being disappeared... Genocide?

This might seem like some ruminations of someone sitting and pondering such issues. Well, some of us have to do just that. It is important we begin to put ourselves into proper African centered perspective… I have played around with some themes and ideas above. Due to the short space of the Facebook posting, I will summarize here by saying:

We have to begin to see a new way of seeing, thinking and acting/doing. We have the opportunity and ability to do the things we want to do, anytime, as a collective. But it begins somewhere in order to go anywhere or be anything. Reading and propagating each other on the Viral Soup is but one sure way to begin to splurge our meme and zines as we see fit.

I want to share this piece in closing:

Amilcar Cabral Writes:

'Unity and Struggle' ... Obviously, to study the basic meaning of this fairly simple principle we must know well what Unity is and What Struggle is. And we must put or treat the question of 'struggle in particular context, that is from the geographical viewpoint and bearing in mind and society — social and economic life, etc., — of the environment in which we want to apply this principle of Unity and Struggle.

"What is Unity? We can clearly take Unity in a sense which one might call static. for example,if we consider the entirety of bottles in the world, one bottle is a Unity. Daniel Barreto[Jabu Mkhwanazi] is a Unity. And so on. Is this the Unity we are interested in considering in our work when we speak to our people's cultural principles? Is it or is not. It is to the extent that we want to transform a varied entirety of persons into a well defined entirety seeking one path.

"And it is not because here we must not forget that within this entirety there are diverse elements. Rather, the meaning of Unity that we see in our principles is the following: whatever might be the existing differences, we must be one, an entirety, to achieve a given aim. This means that our principle, Unity, is taken in dynamic sense, in motion."

Another example:

"You see a person coming along, for example, with a basket on her head, and the person usually sells fruits. You do not know what fruits are inside the basket, but say: here she comes with a basket of fruit. There might be orangesges, bananas, papayas, guavas, etc., inside the basket. But in our thinking, she is coming with an entirety which represents a Unity, one basket on her head, one basket of fruit.

"You know that it is a Unity, whether from the point of view of number: one basket of fruit; or of objective: sale. It is all one thing, even though there are various things inside: various fruits, mango, bananas, papayas, etc. But the fundamental question that is comment with fruit for sale makes it all into a single thing.

"That is to give you an idea of what Unity is and to tell you that the basic principle of Unity lies in the difference between the items.So what is Unity for us? What is the objective around which we must make Unity in our land? Obviously we are not a football team, or a basket of fruit.

"We are people, or members of a people, who at a certain stage of their history, have taken a certain course on their path... have raised certain matters in their spirit and their life, have guided their action in certain direction, have put certain question and have sought answers.

"It might all have begun with one person alone, or two, or three, or six. At a certain stage this question appeared in our midst - Unity. And We, as a people, were able to be far-sighted, that is, understood this so well, that in its very theme their adopted as its main principle, as the base of everything, Unity And Struggle"

I would like to cite Cabral as much as possible, but in the final analysis, we are going to get very serious, and mull and ponder these critical issues and matters, very soon, if not Now… For Our Own Survival....

Dr. Amos Wilson - Death at an Early Age: The Failure of the Education System

What Is Going On Here In Our Country We Call Mzantsi... Hmmmm...?

Are We In Control Or Out Of Control? Di Ntshang? Zikhiphani for Ma-What? (What's Going On?)

Rumination About Our State Of OurNation - Not Not -Yet-Developed-Developing African South African Nation...

Today, within the African milieu of Mzantsi, there's a paucity of serious dialogue by those who lead the discussion/talking points, and all those that Partake and end up Leading the nationgroups, as individuals, but like a collective. Some call this socialism, others call it Communism… I call it National Community Communalism.

What is that? Well, one can harken back into our various 10 cultures of Mzantsi and cull from it common elements of behavior, actions, talks, languages, music, dances, clothing, culture, history, customs, traditions, sacred rites and practices, philosophy, psychology, sociology, and the whole human endeavor that we are part of on this earth-we will then begin the infant stutter-steps required to comprehensively control and work with our forlorn, destitute and under siege people to be sure we know what we are doing. Forming One Nation.

We have to begin somewhere down the time line of our existing in South Africa and think/act along these lines, and act as we think and know. There are no half measures or short-cuts here. Otherwise we might as well as all Shut Up and ditch the farce and attempt to keep on writing and posting the farcial inconsequential and pompous utterances which do nothing for us. I repeat this in another way: We better get down seriously.

What's my schtick? Well, for now. I will defer to Jose Marti:

"An ignorant people can be deceived by superstition and become servile. An instructed people will always be strong and free. An ignorant man is on his way to becoming a beast, and a man instructed in knowledge and conscience is on his way to being a god. One must not hesitate to choose between a nation of gods and a nation of beasts."

"The best way to "defend our rights is to know them well"; in so doing one has faith and strength; every nation will be unhappy in proportion to how poorly educated are its inhabitants. "A Nation Of Educated Men Will Always Be A Nation Of Free Men". Education is the only means of being saved from slavery. "A Nation Enslaved To Men Of Another Nation Is As repugnant As Being Enslaved To The Men Of One's Own".

This is the crux and nub of our miseries. Jose encaspulated it brilliantly and simply. The lesson we must take from it is its simplicity and manifestation likewise. When we talking about our African reality, I apologize to no one, and will state simply: It has to be done-What? Educating and Instructing our African people-No matter how long it takes. That's my take on my life and my reason to be in existence.

I really am not interested, at this point in my life, in caring who reads or does not read, nor cares about what I am saying talking about Africans of Mzatnsi-neither will I compromise my zeal and passion to see to it that my own African people begin, again, get to see the importance of education and our controlling and determining our destiny on in this earthly spheroid, blasting through eternity(thought so, for now).

In our present state and existence as the Africans of Mzantsi, there is this gnawing feeling that we have been invaded and are being pushed-out and some places occupied by non-indigenous African people, and when we utter whimpering cry about the fact that this is our country and land, are dismissed and put down by our African brothers.

This is a fact and it is going on as I am onto this piece above. What I am saying then is, I am not going to apologize to anyone when it comes to trying to cobble together our Country and Nation, and its people, in the Sobukwe sense of the meaning and reality/philosophy.

What's happening? I then ask. Di Ntshang? Zikhiphani For Ma What(What's Happening?) Why fore/Whytofore? This to me is interrogating our people's life, mental health, basic human rights and these Rights guaranteed under the Bill Of Rights Of South Africa-of which, many of our people do not know, but have a general sense about it-but as to what they mean-that still needs to be seen. We have to take ourselves seriously and care for each other in the Bikoan sense of creating a brave and new Human Face here in our country-amongst our African people.

Biko has said it best: "Ours is a Human Centered Culture-It Has Man At and As Its center." This is so true and relevantly correct and resonating with many of us, that it becomes easy to imbibe, digest, analyze and apply and make it real without any effort for our African people.

For instance, the Facebook Social Media is well adaptable to our cultural style and practice/orality, that we should by now be prolific in this medium in creating memes and zines that are from the ground up. Meaning, if you work amongst our people, you end up talking and acting like our people and you will only become relevant if what you say they can identify with and within oneself, own people, being themselves, and see them looking at themselves and you as important parts of what is being said about them/him/her-Nation.

This is a very sensitive and dangerous time in our country of Mzantsi, and we still have to talk to what is really taking place. We know that our aquifers are being dried up throughout our country; our underground rivers are being redirected to the burgeoning coal mines along the Limpopo; the new gold minefields that are,desparately business in need of water to develop are drying up our rivers.

We know that there is this fracking issue along the Karoo lands; insufficient housing for millions that are still dwelling in shacks and ramshackle corrugated iron structures that are freezers and fire hazards in the Winter; and are boiling ovens and water dredged in the rainy seasons. So that, whilst the hospitals are no more training competent nurses/too many agencies are fly-by-night training institutions; poorly equiped and badly untrained teachers: no more teachers colleges are built; we are in the rut.

This is a time when we see the real true gendarme element bare its creed. Meaning, we know that the government is useless for and to us. We have heard it in gossip-the type of yellow journalism that characterize our newspapers, with the macabre stories and Believe-it-Or-Not type of reportage, our information is serviced by this type of sensationalism, that in the end, it ends up as useless data. I have written extensively about the South African Press elsewhere, I will simply note that this is something we should be deciphering thoroughly by now, and knowing what we are dealing with.

Television is not worse for wear-Or maybe it is. I mean, it is the syndicated productions from America, who have already and installed infrastructure in South Africa to accommodate their splurging and entrenching their TV-style and American News Dissemination octopus that this too is one pressing thing we should be learning more about, understanding, and setting ourselves up to deal with it to suit our own needs and expectation.

Be that as it may be, our Culture is well-suited to maneuver and manipulate this modern Media and Modern Men/Women. Does this Mean becoming a poor copy of what our Masters are? No. It simply means we have the ability and capability to transform and morph as we see fit in today's techno society and environments.

We have our own narratives which we can work with, and these have an alluring effect and affect on our people, tremendously. I am more interested in the listening habits and media preferences of our people, their wanting to know what the programs are about. I know about those themes of the stories-My interest is to learn and work with our people in transforming present-day media int their own aesthetic holistic understanding of the content and media/medium.

So that, then, if we can configure the whole strata/sector and the whole Nation thingy thingamajig, I think we can begin to get used to thinking in real, coherent and revolutionary changing ways.

It is not enough to only rehash what happened in the June 1976 Revolution, but also we must know and see in ourselves and society what has this Revolution of June 16th 1976 has spawned in us, we will then know truly and surely that it was successful. But until then, if we are going to be like I am about to write about below, then, we are in serious trouble we the people of Mzantsi.

Ziikhipani For Ma What? (Say What? What's Happening)…

Our Township parlance is one way I think I have been particularly enamored with. It is a great shorthand and conceptualizing and discerning phenomena whatever it is. It is a suave way to speak and think, and the language itself is 21st century, and it is as old and different as the regions themselves throughout South Africa are. I am in the Region of Gauteng and in Soweto, and in my particular Hood, we have evolved an extensive and language system that is as urbane as any in any Metropolis around the world.

There are many amongst us who are averse to such palaver. I am not. I consider all African languages throughout South Africa to be a true reflection of the different regions we live in, and perceive no difference, as such with these. I only see diversity that has not been an addressed aggressively from an African centered and clearly informed perspective. I touch up on this, briefly, below.

Our own local motion and intonation and style is well-suited to any other in the world. It is what we are talking about and dealing that helps shape our consciousness, and make us efficiently erudite-at all times. We are just as well equipped and adapt/adept in our colloquialism and annunciation/pronunciation and fkuently eloquent in our Township Slang that I find it very useful as tool of discourse and rapport amongst ourselves. I think that in talking the way our people speak, we become one with them, and we are on the same page with our People.

But this does not end there. It is a means through which we will have to apply ourselves to the decrepit given the conditions and our existential reality. Our education of ourselves and our people for one. This is still eluding our understanding as to what we are doing here and with our education-evenlong after June 16th 1976. Then there's the problem that we the people of Mzantsi have not really defined what and how we want our education to be.

This is tripping everything we might try to do. Our being educated in our own country, by other people either than us, where our education has been outsourced and in many cases in the hands of the Western Public relations officers and huge corporation-this is unconscionable. When we see the education we are fed today, the commercialization of our education, and in the process, you see the local jargon that we have 'Private Schools" or Model C School, and of course there are abandoned and forgotten Township School-Apartheidized Education Post Neo Colonialism-One comes to realize that we are in a serious mess

Josse Marti states:

'Popular Education does not mean education of the poorer classes exclusively, but rather that all classes in the nation, tantamount to saying the people-be well educated. Just as there is no reason why the rich are educated and not the poor, what reason is there for the poor to be educated and not the rich. They are all the same.'

This is what we African people fail to understand that we have the power of doing for our own education-Everything good and excellent. We do not have the necessary materials to be able to work on such matters. because at the forefront of everything we do: Money/Cash nexus is King.

But many of us are still hung up on the fact that our children will be better educated in these expensive suburban schools, when many of Soweto Kids are hauled in private cars and buses to be dropped at those schools into the White people's enclaves, to be edumacated, then, when they come out out of the grist mill of those school factories, they serve no purpose to us. as an African people...

What we have conveniently forgotten is the fact that many of us no more want to do what Jose Marti talks about in short below:

"Every man when he arrives upon this earth has a right to be educated, and then , in payment, the duty to contribute to the education of others."

My thing, therefore, is that, Education as we should be applying and implementing it, should be decided by us as to what that type of activity will be for all and sundry. If we are going to choose the dictation of other people's aphorisms and their edumacating our African polity and collective to get certain ideas forward and forth, that is not a good thing among u, and we should be doing our own educating of ourselves, but that should be not the 'only' thing we should be doing. There are many things we should be doing to begin to cobble our education/nation, not what we are seeing being done to us African preople of south south Africa: Dumbing Us Down.

Books are expensive. The Internet is very expensive and takes a lot of money out of the poor people's budgets and lines up the pocket if International Kapital.[Das Kapital]. It is now more harder to have a broader mass informed society, like we have an army of the captured poor being denied access to all things education and instruction, along with knowledge gathering. This is a tactic and technique we should be cognizant to by now

The whole system of education has been muddled and it is worse than it was during Apartheid. It is a well-known fact that the Fat-Cats in our midst take their children to even more exclusive school, overseas. They have been doing it for years. And now we have a cadre of children, now grown up, and are foreign to us their parents, societies and nation. Meanwhile, we have an army of youth schooled in delapidated and poor schools

We should not be afraid to tell each other of our vices and follies-faults and foibles… But at least be honest enough to badly want per see some form of change in our life-time. Right now, everything is chaos in our midst, and we not do not have any coherent ideas/strategy as to What's To Be Done?(A la Lenin).Well, for us today, that is the conundrum. We all come to fore here on Social Media with various ideas but our own. That is a recipe for disasters, right there.

We can talk or wax about this or that overseas, but less of that and so on about ourselves here at home. It is because many of us want to be what we are not-we can only be what we dreate ourselves to be. There are many people in our Townships who think that they are Americans. This is very distracting and delaying our discovering ourselves fully. I have said this before… Yourself is a sure bet in tackling the vicissitude of life, unlike some phony-baloney of a misperceived and confused self.

We will never be Americans… Instead, we still have a lot in our plate to contend with and become Africans of South South Africa-without apologizing to no one for saying so-nor copy-cating anyone. In the same vein, Cultural Pride is no misdemeanor nor high crime anywhere on earth for present-day humans..

Since we are at it, thus far, it behooves me to remind all reading this that we are a people who are coping and recovering from the most devastating form of slavery and oppression known to man-to date. I do not have to digress in to that story and history, but lest it be forgotten, that there are other nations state that declare that they will not forget the heinous crimes committed on themMeanwhile, we, still today, are having to live with the raw reminders of our decrepit existence, now exacerbated by quislings and cutthroat vulture capitalist, who have melanin-like the majority of us.

Jose Marti Noted:

"An ignorant people can be deceived by superstition and become servile. An instructed people will always be strong and free. An ignorant man is on his way to becoming a beast, and a man instructed in knowledge and conscience is on his way to being a god. One must not hesitate to choose between a nation of gods and a nation of beasts.

"The best way to "defend our rights is to know them well"; in so doing one has faith and strength; every nation will be unhappy in proportion to how poorly educated are its inhabitants. "A Nation Of Educated Men Will Always Be A Nation Of Free Men". Education is the only means of being saved from slavery. "A Nation Enslaved To Men Of Another Nation Is As repugnant As Being Enslaved To The Men Of One's Own".

We cannot escape this truism above. We are all seeing this play out right in front of our own eyes with our present leaders. What Jose was talking about in 1878, was that, up to that time he wrote that, that was the real zeitgeist. From his times, those of Jose, to oour present reality, we have not yet even realized this truth, and today in Mzantsi, we keep on electing those so-called leaders to rule over us and we end up fighting them timex. We paddling the stationary wheel to no end.

This gotta stop, and a more coherent and very focused efforts have to become implemented, anew.How many times are we going to go through this democratic farce? Mmmmm? Are we going to repeat the oft seen scene without change of optics?

This is a wonderment on my part that we have come, again, towards celebrating an event that was transformative, June 16 1976, and we are still in more or less the same situation, and the ANC has gone to lengths to call it "Youth Day"? What that? How semantics have been deployed here, has numbed us to obsolescence, to being disappeared... Genocide?

This might seem like some ruminations of someone sitting and pondering such issues. Well, some of us have to do just that. It is important we begin to put ourselves into proper African centered perspective… I have played around with some themes and ideas above. Due to the short space of the Facebook posting, I will summarize here by saying:

We have to begin to see a new way of seeing, thinking and acting/doing. We have the opportunity and ability to do the things we want to do, anytime, as a collective. But it begins somewhere in order to go anywhere or be anything. Reading and propagating each other on the Viral Soup is but one sure way to begin to splurge our meme and zines as we see fit.

I want to share this piece in closing:

Amilcar Cabral Writes:

'Unity and Struggle' ... Obviously, to study the basic meaning of this fairly simple principle we must know well what Unity is and What Struggle is. And we must put or treat the question of 'struggle in particular context, that is from the geographical viewpoint and bearing in mind and society — social and economic life, etc., — of the environment in which we want to apply this principle of Unity and Struggle.

"What is Unity? We can clearly take Unity in a sense which one might call static. for example,if we consider the entirety of bottles in the world, one bottle is a Unity. Daniel Barreto[Jabu Mkhwanazi] is a Unity. And so on. Is this the Unity we are interested in considering in our work when we speak to our people's cultural principles? Is it or is not. It is to the extent that we want to transform a varied entirety of persons into a well defined entirety seeking one path.

"And it is not because here we must not forget that within this entirety there are diverse elements. Rather, the meaning of Unity that we see in our principles is the following: whatever might be the existing differences, we must be one, an entirety, to achieve a given aim. This means that our principle, Unity, is taken in dynamic sense, in motion."

Another example:

"You see a person coming along, for example, with a basket on her head, and the person usually sells fruits. You do not know what fruits are inside the basket, but say: here she comes with a basket of fruit. There might be orangesges, bananas, papayas, guavas, etc., inside the basket. But in our thinking, she is coming with an entirety which represents a Unity, one basket on her head, one basket of fruit.

"You know that it is a Unity, whether from the point of view of number: one basket of fruit; or of objective: sale. It is all one thing, even though there are various things inside: various fruits, mango, bananas, papayas, etc. But the fundamental question that is comment with fruit for sale makes it all into a single thing.

"That is to give you an idea of what Unity is and to tell you that the basic principle of Unity lies in the difference between the items.So what is Unity for us? What is the objective around which we must make Unity in our land? Obviously we are not a football team, or a basket of fruit.

"We are people, or members of a people, who at a certain stage of their history, have taken a certain course on their path... have raised certain matters in their spirit and their life, have guided their action in certain direction, have put certain question and have sought answers.

"It might all have begun with one person alone, or two, or three, or six. At a certain stage this question appeared in our midst - Unity. And We, as a people, were able to be far-sighted, that is, understood this so well, that in its very theme their adopted as its main principle, as the base of everything, Unity And Struggle"

I would like to cite Cabral as much as possible, but in the final analysis, we are going to get very serious, and mull and ponder these critical issues and matters, very soon, if not Now… For Our Own Survival....

King Nyaope: Death To Our Nation

A Nyaope User Confessing That Nyaope Is Killing Them-Literally and figuratively speaking

Creating Nyaope for smoking or injecting

Nyaope Smoker

Nyope Users, Thugs and Dealers

Drugs, Gun And Death In The African South African Communities: Ugh! Azania...

Not All Of Us See politics in the same way... But we all Undergo The same Experiences...

According to Jose Marti:

"We must state categorically that there is no salvation for our people unless we turn our backs on all the models that charlatans of all types have tried to sell us for twenty years. There is no salvation outside of this rejection. There is no development separate from a rupture of this kind. All those new intellectual giants who are emerging from their slumber — awakened by the dizzying rise of billions of men in rags, aghast at the threat of this hunger-driven multitude weighing on their digestion — are beginning to rework their speeches/[writings].

"Far it being for me to ridicule the patient efforts of honest intellectuals who, because they have eyes to see, are discovering the terrible consequences of the devastation imposed on us by so-called specialists in the development of the Third World. My fear is to see the fruits of so much energy co-opted by Prosperos of all kinds who — with a wave of their magic wand — spirit us to world of slavery dressed up in today's "fashions.

"My fear is justified even more by the fact that the educated petty bourgeoisie of Africa - if not the entire world — is not prepared to give up its privileges, either because of intellectual laziness or simply because it has tasted the Western way of life. Because of these petty bourgeois forget that all genuine political struggle requires rigorous, theoretical debate, and they refuse to rise to the intellectual effort of conceiving new concepts equal to the murderous struggle that lies ahead of us. Passive and pathetic consumers, they wallow in terminology Fetishized by The West, Just As They Wallow In Western Whiskey And Champagne In Shady-Looking Lounges.

"Ever since the concepts of negritude and African Personality, now showing their age, the search for ideas that are genuinely new produced by the brains of our "great" intellectuals is in vain. Our vocabulary and our ideas come from elsewhere. Our professors, engineers, and economists are content to simply add color — from often the only things they brought back with them from European/American universities that have produced them are their degrees and their velvety adjectives and superlatives!(Sankara is confirming what Andre Gunder Frank was saying above).

Sankara:

"It is both necessary and urgent that our trained personnel and those who work with the pen learn that there is no such thing as neutral writing. In these stormy times we cannot give today's and yesterday's enemies monopoly over "thought," "imagination," and "creativity."

"Before it too late — and it is already late — this elite, these men of Africa and of the Third World, must come home to themselves, that is, to their societies and to the miseries we inherited. They must understand that the battle for ideology that serves the needs of the disinherited masses is not in vain. but they must understand, too, that they can only become credible on an international level by being genuinely creative — by "Portraying A Faithful Image Of Their People, An Image Conducive to Carrying Out Fundamental Change In Political And social Conditions And To Wrenching Our Countries From Foreign Domination And Exploitation, Which Leave Us No Other Perspective Than bankruptcy."

The citation above is an introduction to the piece I am posting below. The Drugs are decimating our people and everything, worse than Aids, with the same powerful destructive effect/affect, and devastating impact on us: especially in the community I am about to talk about.Before I do, I want to preface my comments on the article above by saying: we might try very hard to play the game of the Ostrich burying its head in the sand, but, we are even more exposed by doing that, and cannot even see and deal with the dangers facing us, today.

In the Township of Orlando, the oldest one of all the various Soweto Townships that expand from it; drugs are wreaking havoc, and piercing at the core of the community more than many here on all the Social Media are willing to accede or acknowledge. I have written extensively here on Facebook about the drug pandemic that has assailed us, and promised will come back with new information and update about the Nyaope that is wiping us out. Seriously. I will post the earlier post on Maponya again, at the end of this piece.

I have posted the fact that the ANC government has acknowledged that ''drug abuse'' poses an even bigger threat to its young people'(the children and youth of Mzantsi), than the HIV/AIDS pandemic. I think both are huge, and are really furiously gnawing away at our people and us. Many diss and deride these users, but many of us today, who have to live with and amongst our African people in Orlando and witnessing first hand what is going down-We feel/see it; what is happening to us on a much grander and macabre state that many really nor care to know-it is what is our reality…

When I write such articles, the supposed-elite-African-intelligentsia and other such opportunists, keep quite, and do not even do anything. Some pick up ideas and apply themselves and their newly found ideas in trying to do something for the people. Be as it may, this present article is present a report, news that is not reported, and stories from the Township of Orlando, that are swirling throughout the denizens of Orlando, but are tangentially known by the rest of our edumacated elite-and they are national in scope. Orlando is but just a window into the whole cesspool and morass that is our decrepit existence, That is why I will not stop writing about these sad chapters in our lives, but, am writing them for posterity, and to preserve them as historical record for our children and people/Nation.

There are two things I would like to take a look at, and lastly try and interrogate the whole social miasma as it is shaped, to date.

We have a rat-rodent problem which is being exacerbated by the corrugated iron shacks patched/made of boards, plastics and anything to build a dwelling for our people. Orlando is very well-known to have legions of this structures in their yards, and these have created this formidable rat invasion and other creatures, which causes that the people say things about their presence bordering on conspiracy theories. Nonetheless, it is a fact that these rats and rodents are biting the people's doors; also, they are biting the children sleeping and creating a host of other ailments we have not even begun to deal with.

The most recent posts I have dropped on all sorts of Social Media, are geared towards us beginning to write about our real realities and maybe many of us will begin to learn and see something that we had not even thought about, before. Creating a literature from the grassroots reporting as I am about to do, is one way to go, of the many that can used. I am going to make sure that this disaster that the people of Orlando are facing, as I am onto this article, is exposed and written about as clearly, and as much in a raw way as I can conjure and write it down.

I have waxed political and theoretical enough on the most recent two pieces I have posted here on Facebook and elsewhere. Now, I want to delve into the environment I live and exist in and to make an attempt to caricature its reality and effects/affects on us. What is happening as I am onto this article in our Township is unconscionable. There is no moral justification as to what is happening to our youth, and the adult(children, baby population). This is a very serious thing happening to us here, and I think I will talk about it now.

Here in Orlando we are facing a deadly and serious drug epidemic. Drugs are so rife, that we have several drug potentates planted throughout the whole Township and in many contemporary youth social events. Pretext of an event is a carte blanche operation for the drug dealers and distributors. Drugs have a unique and not so sophisticated way the travel and are disseminated in our community here in the Kasi(Township). It would at one time help us to deal with this problem better if this were to followed up and exposed.

Here in Orlando, we customarily call areas within Our Township of Orlando, by the first numbers of their street, in one part of Orlando, and others have their names for a general group of areas, but being Orlando too. So, in the areas of the street known as '20, we have chaos that is replicated throughout Soweto and the whole hinterland of South Africa with similar ghettoes and decrepit life-style existences. These are the throw-back and creation of Apartheid, and from these enclaves, we find similar scenes and realities that I am describing below in Orlando.

This is news that is not news in the traditionally White owned media and nor in the dialogue going on inside the country. What it is I am saying this is not important for no reporters ever take time to sit down and look at, participate in and try their darnest to bring this situation into light. We as the grown up residents and former students who were involved in the 1970 Student Revolution, are looking at our and within our own Townships, and what we are seeing is some kind of carnage: Drugs destroying and decimating our famous, friends, society and the African race. This is what is happening now as I am onto this article.

One of the general terms given to this devastating drug, it is called "Nyaope," a generic name for a killer drug that has left our youth being spooks and walking skeletons right in front of us. What a mess we are in as a people today in Orlando.. So sad to see… Heartbreaking and discouraging. What we have to live with everyday is spiritually.- soulfully taxing and seriously soul and spirit bruising. I think one has to see it to grasp my meaning. I am going to try and get some pictures, very soon. Optics do serve a relevant tool and technique in what we have to try and contain and at the moment, are at loss what we can or should do.

Nyaope Hell Holes And Meat Grinders

As I had said above, in the area of the Streets known as 20(this includes street No. 19) in Orlando, there is this wheelchair drug dealer thug called Nkesi. He runs a drug-dealing den in plain sight with tight security to go. His hirelings are destitute and jobless and lacking in education or dropouts, both girls and boys, who, even go to his hovel(home if one may say so) which is a terrible and a hell for drug-addicted girl teenagers, who would do anything for a fix. That is where we get to see many victims come out/thrown from or these hell holes with HIV/AIDS, and other STDs that are still dismally afflicting and affecting our people, children, youth and elderly-either dead or sickly.

When you see these youth and grown ups pining and crazily craving the drug, they steal water taps, fenced gates, copper wires from the electric poles and houses-ones heart and soul/spirit sinks to its lowest ebb. They have a favorite on their menu, which is these new Plasma TV Screen. It is said if they do not sell them, they imbibe the white powder they find therein, which is fatally destructive, but it is their high pick on the menu of drugs. They also sell them to earn money to go back and buy the Nyaope.

Known as 'Grootie'(Big Brother) or Ketsi, on his wheelchair is loathed by many of the this youth, and those brave enough, tell all about him. They talk of his crude and cruel ways of their treatment by him and many others of his foot-soldiers who run the errands of buying drugs from HIV/Aids patients-they are also enforcers. Some of these people afflicted with the HIV/AIDS disease, collect their rations of the ARV's from different hospitals and outlets, using various means, by moving from one place to the other-collecting the pills. So that, In the end, they sell these pills to the dug-lords foot-soldiers, who in turn sell them to the distributors and providers of this Nyaope for a fee. This is the cycle, of how this whole operation gets done.

Many people are affected in various dire and unknown ways by these burgeoning drugs. There are crews that operate in our midst in the trade of dealing or distributing drugs and raking in millions of Rands in their operations. The houses that they use for such illicit and illegal operations, are houses that the family in that house might have disappeared/wiped out, or is complicit in the trade, and there is no order, and some like Ketsi, have security tight operations that everyone knows, and have installed within their dens, the State Of The Art Cameras driven by some new and sophisticated technology. So that, as these mini-factories churn out corpses and walking spooks/zombies, we have to live with the scourge-and all the time feeling downright helpless.

The police are on the top of the pecking totem pole and order The bribes they get makes them look askance, and their drug-lords/partners in crime and genocide, are never arrested, but if they do, sit in front with the cop driving, and are out in a matter of hours. Bodies of young girls are found strewn in the street corners or the middle of the road, having been ravaged and no one investigates, and yet the locals know who did it-but the locals state that they are bodies thrown out of these caverns. They dare not talk, for even the innocent ones have been killed for no other reason than that they were innocent and were never involved in anything of the kind of operations/drug-dealing or drug use, I have briefly discussed above.

If one were to see these kids and elderly, they have this menacing/angry look, and the people say they are even more wild and daring/bold when they have not smoked their stuff/Nyaope. So that, this leads them to carrying out dastardly deeds, murder and what it takes just to get a fix. They are jaded, ashen and very 'blackened' and gaunt-looking-Ghost-like, and never ever wash. The local lore has it that they no more beat them, once they catch them stealing, they simply pour water over them, and they end up howling like wild creatures with all the water coming down on them. Some say that this water acts like acid on them. There is some kernel of truth in that, but as to the validity of the claim, the jury is still out on that one.

The behavior of these strung-up youth is appalling and galling. It is also sad to see a wasted life moving like an ogre or zombie out of whack and stone to the max. This something to behold and it is devastating and crushing on some of our souls, mind and bodies. Our kids talk like they are having speech deformities, and they are bent and very wild-eyed-looking and are always on the prowl in search of another theft or robberies-to get another fix/high. Hooded thugs prowl the hood and rape and abduct and rob women as they are headed off to work in the wee hours of the mornings. So many rapes, so many muggings-men are also mugged, and most times shot; assaults, murders and all kids of undeclared war on the our polity is causing a costly blow we will take many centuries to recover from, that I come here onto the Facebook collective and ask that something be done before it's too late, of which it is beginning to look like it is very late.

As a temporary tangent, we have drug dealing in the coughing medicines sold in the Pharmacies or Chemist that are laced with cocaine, and now they are selling all over the place for around R15.00-are the hot item that is proliferating in our midst. The name of that guy is Adcock Ingram, and the cough syrup is manufactured by the famous 'Broncleer' according to the presenter, and whose name, the journalist or hostess of the show is Nkepile Mabuse and the name of the show is "Check Point" on e-TV it was aired on 02. 06. 15 at 10:00 pm-and that is where I got this bit of information from. People are now addicted to this concoction, and it is marketed by a person, whose company name appears of the cough drops for infants, and only our Ancestors know what they are putting in this old cures for babies. This is another issue I will be talking a bit about whenever I complete my researches.

In the manufactories spotting and dotting the landscape, some of these youth are telling of how they have to wear latex gloves when making this Nyaope or some obscure drug mix-because it is hot and burns the skin; they even volunteer information as to the fact that they make it inside some tires, for they do not destruct just as quickly and for whatever reason. There's a whole of deadly mixes of rat poison, Dagga, some disinfectant, ARV's Mandrax tablets and other natural salts/chemicals and an assortment of everything to produce this drug or drugs of the same ilk.

As I am onto this piece, one of my friends just walked in complaining about the lack of electricity for the pas so many hours. He says that rumors has it that a copper cable has been stolen, just as I am writing about this issue here on this piece. We are under an attack and deluge of thefts perpetrated by these Nyaope users, and that is why some houses and sections of Orlando do not have electricity now-this was not due to power-load sharing. People even steal water, that is in those locations that have these water meters. People are not working, and cannot afford pre-paid electricity, and metered water, which have been outsourced to foreign corporation/countries, and they are fleecing us so badly and leave us always in the cold and literally dry.

Both youthful but shredded and emaciated looks of youth, girls and boys are dropping out of schools in droves and headed into these drug dens, they are emaciated, blackened, dry-deadened physiques, drooling and zombie-like spook-looking walking dead.The poor once youthful great looking girls are smoking anything, have HIV/AIDS, sleep around with anyone and thoroughly abused sexually, sickly and bony looking with eyes drooping out of their sockets, very thin-looking, breasts sagging and wasted and gaunt faces; hair falling off, this for us is watching death incalculable and very dumbing and numbing-Daily.

Then there's Madambi. The character too lives around the 20s Street, and he too is into high tech, eking money out of the inhabitants, and he too is destroying the youth for he has created a well organized enterprise and has his henchmen, but he is not bigger than Nektsi.

Funked-Up Society - A People On The Precipe Of The Dark Hole

This brings us to the "Hell House". So dubbed because in it everything and anything happens or takes place. This is where the meat-grinder modus operandi is churning out corpses, Murders are routine and there is a general sense of intimidation that is the norm and credo. As for the Cops, they are nowhere to be seen, or the same thing happens when they arrest the Drug-lords, the thugs are always let go and they bribe their way out.

Bribery is another scourge that is endemic amongst law-enforcement people in south Africa-it has become a sort of a culture of laissez fair and a carte balance spirit that has prevailed for some decades now. In the Noordgesig Colored Township, there are Old ladies who sell what they call "Space Cookies". These are bought and eaten by the students of Noordgesig High School, and this leaves the kids High And smoked out/High. Thus the persisting problem of school drop-out rate as I have just touched upon above.

At night, the poor working women, early risers and leavers headed to work in the dark, are susceptible to lurking murderers and rapist as they walk alone towards the required transportation to work. There were patrols by local guys, but this has been sparse and sporadic at best, and the issues of being paid take precedence before anything else, let alone local people's safety. So, we have less patrols in the ungodly hours of the morning. Some Youth in our Block have been encouraged to do this till 6 am. This is not always the case, but the area is better now, for now.

The other underlying but not oft looked important issue, is the fact that we as a people have already beed deadened and conditioned by Apartheid that we are having a hard time coming out of that stalag and mental gulag. Of course we have long been in the Concentration Camps and prisons of Apartheid functioning and operating like the aforementioned Stalag and Gulag meatgiinders and psyche-hospitals that have contributed immensely to our present state of being and existence of our African of South African people.

We now have events called Marikana, a ruse and guise to distribute the drugs and consume liquor and carry on sex by its organizers, that in the end, these place end up with armies of these drug dealers: foot soldiers-who advertise and sell their drugs in these events, the illicit drugs and all forms of booze, and this ends up being an orgy of drugged-out and highly intoxicated youth, which is a setting for other things beyond the pale.

Ketsi's children and other such-like people, have their children going to the best schools in the land. This is unconscionable. This Ketsi self-styled potentate drive all sorts of cars(sits on a wheelchair, mind you) and has many girlfriends… go figure. We have no power to fight against these interlopers, and destroyers of our youth and communities. There needs to be something the people of goodwill here in Mzantsi can do. This is going on as I speak and is not abating.

It is a fact that the drugs have decimated families, youth and elderly people. It has left destruction and ruin in the townships throughout Soweto, but in this case, I will focus on Orlando.

Drugs like Cocaine and Mandrax pills started proliferating in the Township around the early eighties and has now become a pandemic throughout different communities of Africans, Coloreds and Whites. In Orlando East(Soweto), the inhabitants have been watching with dread and fear as their youth became zombies, sick, and died from this drug-which, when imbibed, makes its victims froth at the mouth and tear-up incessantly, walking unsteadily zombie-like walk and creates an ever increasing crave, leading to all sorts of crime that has this drug-besieged Township of Orlando teetering on the brink of lunacy and genocide.

This is a problem which has been thus far so utterly ignored that the residents of Orlando, rallied by the members of the CPF(Community Police Forum which was formed by the local Orlando station police force) along with and run by the local residents-who patrol and try to keep crime at a low minimum. On the second Major Saturday of August 2013, a coalition of local Orlando residents, Their CPF Team and several policemen in their cars descended on the drug dens dotting the Township in each and every street.

Recapping and reposting of the Maponya Saga [I penned many moons ago]: What The Citizens Of Orlando Have Attempted To Do Fighting Drugs In Their communities

As the article above aptly shows we take note on this part of the article that the same sound of singing, became protestations when the coalition I had described above descended onto to the drug houses and dens within Orlando. A very disturbing picture began to emerge.

The Jo'burg Metro police gave permission to the marchers, and provided the police force, and it was explained to the marchers that the agreement, and permission to approach the drug dealers was given. With placards and a huge number of people began advancing to the 'known' Drug dens, and those who sold from street corners or shop stoops.

The people went to the houses, containers used as phone phones booths and other illicit activities including the selling of "Nyaope"; The mob advised the police that the Zimbabweans, Nigerians, Pakistanis, and some Coloreds[along with locals] should be arrested and searched for drugs. In some houses in Orlando, they found drugs on the bodies of Old grannies, who were used as carriers.

Heading the large group was Councilor Matlaka(Councilor of Dube), along with 8(eight) police cars, about 15 policemen ant eh CPF patrollers were about 30, and the rest of the group consisted of a large number of undisclosed members of the local resident. Five young boys were arrested and were found to have drugs on their persons. Some of these dealers were women who had come from the rural areas and were very secretive as to who their suppliers were. Others were resistant to the mob but caved in when they saw the mob's menacing bearing and intent.

In the part of the Township called "Roma"[which is still Orlando], two houses were searched and drug paraphernalia was found; they also found a lot of stolen IDs and Marijuana in bags, along with credit cards and guns. Some of this stuff was found under the beds in some of these houses, or carelessly strewn all over the dirty and unkempt houses.

In another areas of Orlando around a store called "Goodluck" several houses were without owners, and all sorts of evil and illicit and sordid activities have been taken place in plain sight and nobody could anything about it… In one "Pink" Big House, the occupants tried to run away, but were apprehended had had on their person both 'Nyaope' and Marijuana and two guns.

Maponya - (The Nyaope Potentate whose fiefdom is Orlando)

In the area around the Grounds and Tennis Courts(Known Generally as 'Escort'(Still in Orlando) is the headquarters of the Nyaope sales. Hoards of youth and well-off middle class Africans, along with cops(who are in the pay of this guy), who has in his employ, his grandmother, and siblings-the Police and local ANC honchos. One of the 'carriers' who serves his customers on his behalf, was found with six plastics bags and she was in a close to comatose state…

The locals who were in the march, alerted the police that Maponya's grandmother had all the drugs hidden in her body, underneath her clothes. She was very rude and arrogant and dared the police to touch her. She was arrested and searched on arrival in that the police station On seeing what's happening, Maponya attempted to escape, put on a disguise but the citizens saw to it that he was apprehended.

When he was brought into the parked police cars, he insisted that he should sit in the front with the police driver. All the time he was wagging his finger and berating the police, and none responded to his charade. From this incident it was apparent that the Police Commander and his side-kicks(police grunts) were in the pay of this lilliputian drug potentate.

The community, who have been seeing the police and other people of note come to buy or get paid by him over a period of time, lost their cool. They threatened to riot and demanded that Maponya be put in the back of the squad car with all other arrestees. Eventually he was put in the back with all other small-time drug dealers, and he was clearly miffed about this and he carried on his protestations.

What got him off the hook, was the directive the police said that he could not be arrested if he did not have any drugs on him. Those who worked for him refused to snitch or rat out on him. They all denied having received or brought this stuff from him-and the junkies were intimidated into denying that he supplied or sold them the "Nyaope"... This technicality, helped set him free and he was released without being charged.

The crowd moved to an area in Orlando too, called 'Paramount,' and they went into the ramshackle shacks filling up the yards of most houses in Orlando, and in them they found and routed drug dens , prostitution harems, and 3 people were arrested there-considered to be the main bosses. As far as one can tell, "Nyaope" is sold in each and every street in Orlando.

The denizens of Orlando were disgruntled and felt betrayed, because everyone knew who(Maponya) was really distributing drugs wholesale in the Township, and he walked scot-free, due to a flimsy technicality in the law so that, in the end, the people wanted the Minister of the Police, Mrs. Raphiyega and the government to become involved.

The people finally decided to call a meeting in a week of two, to report back to the community these events, and have decided to take the case to the Provincial government and they want the Premier to take this case over.Most of those residents who partook in the raid, have to go around the Township armed

"Drug And Chemical Warfare On the People Of Mzantsi"

Below I will link an article which no longer talks about "Nyaope, but "Whoonga" which is a potent and highly addictive mixture of Marijuana, heroin, and HIV Medications. The same with "Nyaope" and other concoctions, which also include the life-saving pills for HIV-Aids, and literally makes waste of the users and death, sickness, crime, homicide, rape and so forth have spiked. This is a crisis, and it needs to be addressed aggressively, or we stand to loose not only generations, but a whole nation of people high on home-made designer drugs which are decimating communities throughout South Africa with unequaled impunity.

Until the day we Africans of Mzantsi stop thinking of and for our individual selves only, until they day we Africans of Mzantsi say enough is enough; and, until we come to our senses and go and see for ourselves what I am talking about or everyone is writing about what these drugs are doing to us, our people, relatives and communities[Nation], we will forever be in our cocoons and do nothing, and we are clearly facing something more dangerous than HIV AIDs(Which is still battering and wiping the core of our communities), we will in the end taken-snuffed by the genocide we are now facing. There is more to the story as to how these drugs came into the country, and I will be writing an article tracing the origins of this scourge and addiction.

We are really much better than this, lest we forget that.... We can all 'wax political' to our egos content.. But this, is not going away, instead, it is threatening our very existence as the indigenous of the country of South Africa... We are in the clutches of a very dangerous and deadly grip of a drug epidemic whose likes has never been seen before in our country. We need to begin to help ourselves and come to these communities and route the drugs and dealers consistently and brutally, or it is they, as we are seeing, who will run our Townships(they already are) or either its us who will have the finally say, and control and run our townships and communities... Whither Mzantsi....

The article above was made possible by the people of Orlando I talked to. All I did was cobble up all the interviews, and these are what I formed into the narrative above. This is seriously Grassroots news and Grassroots intelligence, which is out there for all who wish to report on the events and issues that are taking place amongst our own people. The newspaper will not put it in the way that Malcolm explained above as I cited him. We have to begin to write our own news and stories, and talk to the people Face-To-Face, and can then afterwards post it on Facebook. Our people have the information as to what's going down in the Township… We just need to get out there, be amongst them, and write these stories, and show them what we have written, in order to get even more gruesome accounts of the lives of our African People Of Mzantsi, today,here on the Viral soup

Dirty Nyaope Fingers...

Historical Class Analysis of Guyanese Society - Dr. Walter Rodney

Colonialism Revisisted: 2015

Understanding Colonial Apartheid In South Africa, Africa and the Diaspora

Zeitgeist Entropy

What we see happening in Mzantsi today has its precedent in African History. If we look closely at what precipitated these events that we see today, then we will be in a better position to begin to understand and wrap our heads around the present decrepit social miasma we are existing in today… To enable us to do this, we are going to do some reading from Walter Rodney, who fills our gaps with this history:

"Faced with the evidence of European exploitation of Africa, many bourgeois writers once at least partially that colonialism was system which functioned well in the interests of the Metroples. However, they would then urge that other issue be resolved is how much Europeans did for Africans, and that it is necessary to draw up a balance sheet of colonialism.

"On that balance sheet, they place both the credits and the debits, and quite often conclude that the good outweighed the bad. That particular conclusion can quite be easily be challenged, but attention should also be drawn to the fact that the process of reasoning is itself misleading. That reasoning has some sentimental persuasiveness. It appeals to the common sentiment that, "After all, there must be two sides to a thing."

"The argument suggests that, on the one hand, there was exploitation and oppression, but, on the other hand, colonial governments did much for the benefit of Africans and they developed Africa. It is our contention that this so completely false. Colonialism had only one hand — it was a one-armed bandit.

"What did the colonial governments do in the interest of Africans? Supposedly, they built railroads, schools, hospitals, and the like. The sum total of these services was amazingly small.For the first three decades of colonialism, hardy anything was done that could remotely be termed a service to the African people. It was in fact only after the last war that social services were built as a matter of policy. How little they amounted to, does not really need illustrating. After all, the statistics which show that Africa today is undeveloped are the statistics representing the state of affairs at the end of colonialism.

"For that matter, the figures at the end of the first decade of African Independence, in spheres such as health, housing, and education, are often several times higher than the figures inherited by the newly independent governments. It would be an act of the most brazen fraud to weigh on the paltry social amenities provided during the colonial epoch against exploitation, and to arrive at the conclusion that the good outweighed the bad.

"Capitalism did bring social services to European workers - Firstly, as a by-product of providing such services for the bourgeoisie and the middle-class, and later as a deliberate act of policy. Nothing remotely comparable occurred in Africa. In 1934, long before the coming of the welfare state to Britain, expenditure for social services in the British Isles amounted to 6 pounds 15 shillings per person. In Ghana, the figure was 7 shillings 4 pence per person, and that was high by colonial standards. In Nigeria and Nyasaland(Tanzania), it was less than 1 shilling 9 pence per head. None of the other colonizing powers were doing any better, and some were much worse.

"The Portuguese stand out because they boasted the most and did the lest. Portugal boasted that Angola, Guinea, and Mozambique(Maputo) have been their possessions fro five hundred years, during which time a "civilizing mission" has been going on. At the end of five hundred years of shouldering the "White Man's Burden" of civilizing "African Natives" the Portuguese have not managed to train a single African Doctor in Mozambique(Maputo), and the life-expectancy in Angola was less than thirty years. As for Guinea-Bissau, some insight into the situation there is provided by the admission of the Portuguese themselves that Guinea-Bissau was more neglected than Angola and Mozambique!(Maputo!)

"Furthermore, the limited social services within Africa during colonial times were distributed in a manner that reflected the pattern of domination and exploitation. First of to have all, White Settlers and Expatriates wanted standards of the bourgeoisie or professional classes of the Metropoles. They were all the more determined to have the luxuries of Africa, because so many of them came from poverty in Europe and could not expect good services in their own homelands.

In colonies like Algeria, Kenya, and South Africa, it is well known that whites created an infrastructure to afford themselves leisured and enjoyable lives. It means, therefore, that the total amenities provided in any of the colonies is not guide to what Africans got out of colonialism. In colonies like Algeria, Kenya, and in South Africa, it is well known that Whites created an infrastructure to afford themselves leisured and enjoyable lives. It means, therefore, that the total amenities privided in any of those colonies is no guide to what Africans got out of colonialism.

"In Algeria, the figure for infant mortality was 39 per 1,000 live births among White Settlers; but it jumped to 170 per 1,000 live births in the case of Algerian living in the towns. In practical terms, that meant that the medic, maternity and sanitation were all geared towards the well-being of the Settlers. Similarly, In south Africa, all social statistics have to be broken down into at least two groups - White and African - if they are to be interpreted correctly. In British East Africa, there were three groups: firstly, the Europeans, who got the most; then, the Indians, who took most of what was left; and thirdly, the Africans, who came last in their own country.

"The viciousness of the colonial system with respect to the provision of social services was most dramatically brought out in the case of economic activities which made huge profits, and notably in the mining industry. Mining takes serious toll of the health of workers, and it was only recently in the Metropoles that minders had access to the kind of medical and insurance services which could safeguard their lives and health.

I"n colonial Africa, the exploitation of miners was entirely without responsibility. In 1930, scurvy and other epidemics broke out in the Lupa Goldfields of Tanganyika. Hundreds of workers died. One should not wonder that they had no facilities which would have saved some lives, because in thee first place, they were not being paid enough to eat properly.

South Africa's large working class African population was in a sad state. The Tuberculosis Commission of 1912 reported that in the shanty towns:

"Scarcely a single family exists in which at least one member is not suffering or dying from tuberculosis, and other cases are simply sent home to die — and spread the infection. In some areas, a single doctor has to attend to the needs of 40,0000 people. The Natives(Africans) must pay for medical treatment. There is not provision for pauper patients. About 65% of the Native(African) children die before reaching two years."

"This was as early as 1912, when the basis of the South African Gold and Diamond empire was already laid. After this, the shanty towns increased, the slum conditions grew worse, and the government committed itself to pursuing the odious policy of Apartheid, which meant separation of the races so as better to exploit the African people.

"Many Africans trekked to towns, because (bad as they were) they offered a little more than the countryside. Modern sanitation, electricity, piped water, paved roads,medical services, and schools were foreign at the end of the colonial period as they were in the beginning — as far as most of rural Africa was concerned.

"The combination of being oppressed, being exploited, and being disregarded is best illustrated by the pattern of the economic infrastructure of African colonies: notably, their roads and railways. These had a clear geographical distribution according tot he extent to which particular regions needed to be opened up to import-export activities. Where exports were not available, road and railways had no place. The only slight exception is that certain roads and railways were built to move troops and make conquest and oppression easier.

"All roads and railways led to the sea. They were built to make business possible for the timber companies, trading companies, and agricultural concession firms, and for White settlers. Any catering to African interests was purely coincidental. Yet in Africa, labor, rather than capital, took the Lion's share in getting things done. With the minimum investment of capital, the colonial powers could mobilize thousands upon thousands of workers. Salaries were paid to the police officers and officials, and labor came into existence because of the colonial laws, their threat of [violence] of force, and the use of force.

"Take, for instance, the building of the railways. In Europe and America, railway building required huge impute of capital. Great wage bills were incurred during construction, and added bonus payments were made to workers to get the job done as quickly as possible. In most parts of Africa, the Europeans who wanted to see a railroad built, offered lashes as the ordinary wage and more lashes for extra effort.

"Most of the intolerable conditions are explained by the non-availability of capital in the form of equipment. Therefore, sheer manpower had to take the place of earth-moving machinery, cranes, and so on. A comparable situation prided by the construction of the Embakasi airport of Nairobi. Because it was built during the colonial era (starting in 1953) and with the United States loans, it is customary to credit the imperialists for its existence. But it would be much more accurate to say the people of Kenya built it with their own hands, under European Supervision."

I have cited the excerpt above at length from Walter Rodney, to begin to lay down some comprehensive history and story of African people under colonization and it meant, entailed and did to them, Also to give more concrete and focused historical timeline, events and situations that have led us to what we see today happening throughout Africa and Mzantsi. Many-a-times we talk abut colonialism, but few of us really know that story and history very well. My aim to give such a long citation from Rodney, is to begin to lay the ground work for our full understanding of the whole complex problem of colonialism. The more we learn and read about the history and sorry of colonialism, this helps us have a much clearer and better understanding of our present-day problems.

Rodney help us make our case here today in Mzantsi, wherein you find many of our opportunistic brothers who are workers or refugees or simply Africans who have run away from the terrible oppression in their mother countries, and are now here in South Africa, look down upon the indigenous Africans, and have been saying that we have no skills and are very lazy.

This is wrong for if one were to read what I have cited from Rodney above, any African, in Africa and the Diaspora, knows what I have just cited as told by Rodney. That is, colonialism has affected us all in Africa in many ways, and we better start talking to each other from the knowledge of our stories and histories, than from being opportunist who are just pleased to be paid less wages, as compared to local Africans, and that their labor power is exploited to the hilt, and that, they are more a problem to us than being on our side of our very long struggle.

Africans in South Africa built the infrastructure many Africans, after the coming into pseudo-power by the ANC, are seeing for the first time. We have seen many of our people being decimated by the effects and affects of the cheap labor wrought from our bodies and being; we have seen many die of various diseases and other strange ailments; poverty has been a constant with us, to date. Our education is the worst I have seen since Bantu Education-The present-day Educational system here in our country is worse than what we received from the Boers in the form of Bantu Education.

Our health system has gone bust and bankrupt, and the present cadre of nurses is terrible and disgusting-ignorant illiterates who have been half-cooked and poorly untrained nurses; Service delivery only benefits the White folks and all the African elite and overnight-rick millionaires, whilst we are stagnant in the Townships, with daily seeing the strikes against lack or poor service delivery.

Africans of Mzantsi built South Africa with their own hands, forced labor and lashes and torture to go with that. That much needs to be respected by our African bothers. Even if many can see that the power we have is a farce and unreal, and that the economy is controlled by Whites, who hire these African people, north of South Africa, in South Africa now, for a piddling wage. Many of these people newly arrived since the ANC took power, now behave and tell us to our faces we ain't shit, and they are better than us, because they have skills, they can work and are far much more better than the local African people. We need to call it as it is, and this is what we are having to deal with here, As Africans of Mzantsi.

So, by utilizing the historical background as provided for by Rodney, we can begin to set the record straight, as to why it is that we here in South Africa have so many issues that unresolved and are at the bottom of the pile in the country we claim has democracy, and that it is now, supposedly better than the time of the Boers. No, the ANC has worsened the situation and we are now back to square minus zero. Rodney puts it clearly, and tries to date us from 1912, and as I have posted this his piece in June 2015. It is also interesting to note how much Rodney recounts the colonial events and a lot of times cites colonial oppression and maltreatment of Africans, in south Africa, as one of his prime examples.

When we hear people from the north of South Africa becoming our harshest critics. Are the ones attacking and berating us, abusing our women, breaking our strikes against the government; accusing us of xenophobia in the end, we then take a step back as Africans of South Africa, and say: You are going to have to hear us now, by hook or crook. Many of our African bothers left their homes in their African countries and trekked to South Africa. But, when the ANC was in exile, it was never given the freedom of movement, jobs, and a carefree attitude as to where they can stay, live or have a decent life.

Instead, the bulk and the majority of the ANC cadre was interned in camps they had to build themselves from scratch. And many of our exiled people have been harrassed and arrested in these countries for breaking their curfew law. So that, now that they come and tell us that they helped us get ourselves free… We simply say, Yeah, right… How So? Protesting with us in London? US at the Unite d nations...

Meanwhile, doing all that, curbing the movement of our brothers and sisters in their countries, because they were too scared to raise the wrath of Apartheid, which occasionally attacked the ANC camps in their countries. Give me a break... Better find another reason for all the disrespect that has been shown to us by our African brothers and sisters from the north of South Africa. This needs to be addressed fully, honestly and forthrightly. I do not fear to say what I have already said, for I know damn well what I am talking about.

The very fact that our African brothers and sisters from the north of South Africa are working assiduously very hard for the White people, that in of itself says a lot about them to us. They do not respect us in this competition for the White-man's job, and when the backlash against their view and behavior towards us comes to the fore, they quickly yell, "Xenophobia!" But no one has yet come forward to show the type of xenophobia South Africans in Exile suffered from these clowns and their governments-some of whom were in cahoots with the Apartheid regime, still, then, and now, undermining our own struggles and interests here in Mzantsi. Let the Truth be told, and may the pieces of it fall where they might.

Sell-outs, throughout Africa have been many and would take the space of mu Hub. All I can say is that those who have trekked from other countries, found work and domicile in Mznatsi, are going to have to begin listening to us, We The People Of Mzantsi, and not some corny flunky of a politician who is in office to grease his pockets. We have had the 'Benzies" throughout Africa, and those leaders of many of these African countries assassinating their genuine and worthwhile leaders, and yet have the audacity to come and point fingers at us here in Mzantsi. We fought our struggles mainly alone. If any help was forthcoming, it was from safe distance and in their far-off lands hollering Away with Apartheid. But, in fact Africa was saved from the Ogre of Apartheid because we fought against it using our bodies, barehands, stones and whatever came our way.

There were none of these famed guerrillas that were marching down from Africa to help us fight Apartheid alone. We were the one who bore the brunt and wrath of the Apartheid machine, and the sanctions and protestations overseas helped a lot, but, people should not come into our country and poke their fingers into our eyes. We need the eyes to see where we are going… So, we cannot allow anyone to bully us around, again, ever. Disrespect by any language is still disrespect. Our country has accommodated the many Africans to the North, it is about time they listened to some of us here in Mzantsi who still have our wits together. Stop the abuse of the indigene of Mzantsi, respect us, and abide by our rules and laws. South Africa is not the country for All Africans, It is the land and country of the African peoples of South Africa. Period! Do not take our kindness for our weakness,

I do not mind saying all the things above because I know they are the truth. If we are going to talk about the histories of the countries north of South Africa and in the Diaspora, let soon begin. That is why I have introduced the piece above by Walter Rodney to edify my theses that it is better for the rest of Africa and the Diaspora that we begin to respect each other, and abide by the rules of the land of South Africa. Our laws may be tardy, but they are laws, and if our politicians are going to use those laws, bend them to earn riches, the very same laws are going to be used to prosecute them for malfeasance and other wrongs against the poor people of Mzantsi. Only time will tell.

Right now, here in Mzatnsi we have a long list of things to take care of. One of this not oft discussed is the importance and affects/effects of history on our lives. Rodney put all things considered into context. He traces the abuses for us, albeit I did not cite the whole chapter, so that we can begin to think much more better and in an informed way about our present-day situations and realities. Know what led us to be where we us is very important, so that we can better begin to deal with the present which is so overwhelming. But What Rodney does for us, if to keep us focused, so that as we mull over these issues, we have a reliable feedback from a solid authority on this subject-that is, he has already done the homework for us, our is to read it, understand it and apply it as we see fit.

I would have liked to cite some more from Rodney, but for now, thus far, what he has already informed us about, is good enough to begin to start the dialogue we need to be carrying out as Africans in south Africa, and those Africans from the north of south Africa-After we the indigenous have dealt with our immediate realities and issues. We too in Mzantsi, owe it to Rodney to come up with a better working strategy as to what we are gone to do as we build our nation. Following the present curve growth is a road leading to nowhere fast. What we ought to do is to be able to meld and cobble-together the myriad issues that we have to deal us, using and knowing-following the objective and other such conditions from the ground up(from the poor people to the richest). This is our only path towards solving our problems.

This applied too to the Africans in the Diaspora. South Africa is a poor caricature of America, and as we speak, cultural imperialism is taking over many of our lives, and has sidelined our culture and then some. I think the struggle today will also depend on the knowledge and awareness the incumbent Revolutionaries will be bringing to the African war table. Let's be clear about what I am talking about. Any change in Africa is going to have to be premised upon African beginning to see, respect and come together without the in-built colonial mind-sets. A much more clearer and deeper understanding of the whole struggle is going to have to be looked at with much more fresh and informed eyes and minds. Ignorance in this techno age is not an excuse, seriously.

Dr. Amos Wilson - Total War

Wole Soyinka

Mzantsi: In The Eye Of The Drug Storm

Drugs, Gun And Death In The African South African Communities: Ugh! Azania...

Not All Of Us See politics in the same way... But we all Undergo The same Experiences...

According to Jose Marti:"We must state categorically that there is no salvation for our people unless we turn our backs on all the models that charlatans of all types have tried to sell us for twenty years. There is no salvation outside of this rejection. There is no development separate from a rupture of this kind. All those new intellectual giants who are emerging from their slumber — awakened by the dizzying rise of billions of men in rags, aghast at the threat of this hunger-driven multitude weighing on their digestion — are beginning to rework their speeches/[writings].

"Far it being for me to ridicule the patient efforts of honest intellectuals who, because they have eyes to see, are discovering the terrible consequences of the devastation imposed on us by so-called specialists in the development of the Third World. My fear is to see the fruits of so much energy co-opted by Prosperos of all kinds who — with a wave of their magic wand — spirit us to world of slavery dressed up in today's "fashions.

"My fear is justified even more by the fact that the educated petty bourgeoisie of Africa - if not the entire world — is not prepared to give up its privileges, either because of intellectual laziness or simply because it has tasted the Western way of life. Because of these petty bourgeois forget that all genuine political struggle requires rigorous, theoretical debate, and they refuse to rise to the intellectual effort of conceiving new concepts equal to the murderous struggle that lies ahead of us. Passive and pathetic consumers, they wallow in terminology Fetishized by The West, Just As They Wallow In Western Whiskey And Champagne In Shady-Looking Lounges.

"Ever since the concepts of negritude and African Personality, now showing their age, the search for ideas that are genuinely new produced by the brains of our "great" intellectuals is in vain. Our vocabulary and our ideas come from elsewhere. Our professors, engineers, and economists are content to simply add color — from often the only things they brought back with them from European/American universities that have produced them are their degrees and their velvety adjectives and superlatives!(Sankara is confirming what Andre Gunder Frank was saying above).

Sankara:

"It is both necessary and urgent that our trained personnel and those who work with the pen learn that there is no such thing as neutral writing. In these stormy times we cannot give today's and yesterday's enemies monopoly over "thought," "imagination," and "creativity.""Before it too late — and it is already late — this elite, these men of Africa and of the Third World, must come home to themselves, that is, to their societies and to the miseries we inherited.

They must understand that the battle for ideology that serves the needs of the disinherited masses is not in vain. but they must understand, too, that they can only become credible on an international level by being genuinely creative — by "Portraying A Faithful Image Of Their People, An Image Conducive to Carrying Out Fundamental Change In Political And social Conditions And To Wrenching Our Countries From Foreign Domination And Exploitation, Which Leave Us No Other Perspective Than bankruptcy.

"The citation above is an introduction to the piece I am posting below. The Drugs are decimating our people and everything, worse than Aids, with the same powerful destructive effect/affect, and devastating impact on us: especially in the community I am about to talk about.

Before I do, I want to preface my comments on the article above by saying: we might try very hard to play the game of the Ostrich burying its head in the sand, but, we are even more exposed by doing that, and cannot even see and deal with the dangers facing us, today.In the Township of Orlando, the oldest one of all the various Soweto Townships that expand from it; drugs are wreaking havoc, and piercing at the core of the community more than many here on all the Social Media are willing to accede or acknowledge.

I have written extensively here on Facebook about the drug pandemic that has assailed us, and promised will come back with new information and update about the Nyaope that is wiping us out. Seriously. I will post the earlier post on Maponya again, at the end of this piece.I have posted the fact that the ANC government has acknowledged that ''drug abuse'' poses an even bigger threat to its young people'(the children and youth of Mzantsi), than the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

I think both are huge, and are really furiously gnawing away at our people and us. Many diss and deride these users, but many of us today, who have to live with and amongst our African people in Orlando and witnessing first hand what is going down-We feel/see it; what is happening to us on a much grander and macabre state that many really nor care to know-it is what is our reality…

When I write such articles, the supposed-elite-African-intelligentsia and other such opportunists, keep quite, and do not even do anything. Some pick up ideas and apply themselves and their newly found ideas in trying to do something for the people. Be as it may, this present article is present a report, news that is not reported, and stories from the Township of Orlando, that are swirling throughout the denizens of Orlando, but are tangentially known by the rest of our edumacated elite-and they are national in scope.

Orlando is but just a window into the whole cesspool and morass that is our decrepit existence, That is why I will not stop writing about these sad chapters in our lives, but, am writing them for posterity, and to preserve them as historical record for our children and people/Nation.There are two things I would like to take a look at, and lastly try and interrogate the whole social miasma as it is shaped, to date

.We have a rat-rodent problem which is being exacerbated by the corrugated iron shacks patched/made of boards, plastics and anything to build a dwelling for our people. Orlando is very well-known to have legions of this structures in their yards, and these have created this formidable rat invasion and other creatures, which causes that the people say things about their presence bordering on conspiracy theories.

Nonetheless, it is a fact that these rats and rodents are biting the people's doors; also, they are biting the children sleeping and creating a host of other ailments we have not even begun to deal with.The most recent posts I have dropped on all sorts of Social Media, are geared towards us beginning to write about our real realities and maybe many of us will begin to learn and see something that we had not even thought about, before.

Creating a literature from the grassroots reporting as I am about to do, is one way to go, of the many that can used. I am going to make sure that this disaster that the people of Orlando are facing, as I am onto this article, is exposed and written about as clearly, and as much in a raw way as I can conjure and write it down.I have waxed political and theoretical enough on the most recent two pieces I have posted here on Facebook and elsewhere.

Now, I want to delve into the environment I live and exist in and to make an attempt to caricature its reality and effects/affects on us. What is happening as I am onto this article in our Township is unconscionable. There is no moral justification as to what is happening to our youth, and the adult(children, baby population). This is a very serious thing happening to us here, and I think I will talk about it now.Here in Orlando we are facing a deadly and serious drug epidemic.

Drugs are so rife, that we have several drug potentates planted throughout the whole Township and in many contemporary youth social events. Pretext of an event is a carte blanche operation for the drug dealers and distributors. Drugs have a unique and not so sophisticated way the travel and are disseminated in our community here in the Kasi(Township). It would at one time help us to deal with this problem better if this were to followed up and exposed.Here in Orlando, we customarily call areas within Our Township of Orlando, by the first numbers of their street, in one part of Orlando, and others have their names for a general group of areas, but being Orlando too.

So, in the areas of the street known as '20, we have chaos that is replicated throughout Soweto and the whole hinterland of South Africa with similar ghettoes and decrepit life-style existences. These are the throw-back and creation of Apartheid, and from these enclaves, we find similar scenes and realities that I am describing below in Orlando.This is news that is not news in the traditionally White owned media and nor in the dialogue going on inside the country.

What it is I am saying this is not important for no reporters ever take time to sit down and look at, participate in and try their darnest to bring this situation into light. We as the grown up residents and former students who were involved in the 1970 Student Revolution, are looking at our and within our own Townships, and what we are seeing is some kind of carnage: Drugs destroying and decimating our famous, friends, society and the African race.

This is what is happening now as I am onto this article.One of the general terms given to this devastating drug, it is called "Nyaope," a generic name for a killer drug that has left our youth being spooks and walking skeletons right in front of us. What a mess we are in as a people today in Orlando.. So sad to see… Heartbreaking and discouraging. What we have to live with everyday is spiritually.- soulfully taxing and seriously soul and spirit bruising. I think one has to see it to grasp my meaning.

I am going to try and get some pictures, very soon. Optics do serve a relevant tool and technique in what we have to try and contain and at the moment, are at loss what we can or should do.Nyaope Hell Holes And Meat GrindersAs I had said above, in the area of the Streets known as 20(this includes street No. 19) in Orlando, there is this wheelchair drug dealer thug called Nkesi.

He runs a drug-dealing den in plain sight with tight security to go. His hirelings are destitute and jobless and lacking in education or dropouts, both girls and boys, who, even go to his hovel(home if one may say so) which is a terrible and a hell for drug-addicted girl teenagers, who would do anything for a fix. That is where we get to see many victims come out/thrown from or these hell holes with HIV/AIDS, and other STDs that are still dismally afflicting and affecting our people, children, youth and elderly-either dead or sickly.

When you see these youth and grown ups pining and crazily craving the drug, they steal water taps, fenced gates, copper wires from the electric poles and houses-ones heart and soul/spirit sinks to its lowest ebb. They have a favorite on their menu, which is these new Plasma TV Screen. It is said if they do not sell them, they imbibe the white powder they find therein, which is fatally destructive, but it is their high pick on the menu of drugs.

They also sell them to earn money to go back and buy the Nyaope.Known as 'Grootie'(Big Brother) or Ketsi, on his wheelchair is loathed by many of the this youth, and those brave enough, tell all about him. They talk of his crude and cruel ways of their treatment by him and many others of his foot-soldiers who run the errands of buying drugs from HIV/Aids patients-they are also enforcers.

Some of these people afflicted with the HIV/AIDS disease, collect their rations of the ARV's from different hospitals and outlets, using various means, by moving from one place to the other-collecting the pills. So that, In the end, they sell these pills to the dug-lords foot-soldiers, who in turn sell them to the distributors and providers of this Nyaope for a fee. This is the cycle, of how this whole operation gets done.Many people are affected in various dire and unknown ways by these burgeoning drugs.

There are crews that operate in our midst in the trade of dealing or distributing drugs and raking in millions of Rands in their operations. The houses that they use for such illicit and illegal operations, are houses that the family in that house might have disappeared/wiped out, or is complicit in the trade, and there is no order, and some like Ketsi, have security tight operations that everyone knows, and have installed within their dens, the State Of The Art Cameras driven by some new and sophisticated technology.

So that, as these mini-factories churn out corpses and walking spooks/zombies, we have to live with the scourge-and all the time feeling downright helpless.The police are on the top of the pecking totem pole and order The bribes they get makes them look askance, and their drug-lords/partners in crime and genocide, are never arrested, but if they do, sit in front with the cop driving, and are out in a matter of hours.

Bodies of young girls are found strewn in the street corners or the middle of the road, having been ravaged and no one investigates, and yet the locals know who did it-but the locals state that they are bodies thrown out of these caverns. They dare not talk, for even the innocent ones have been killed for no other reason than that they were innocent and were never involved in anything of the kind of operations/drug-dealing or drug use, I have briefly discussed above.

If one were to see these kids and elderly, they have this menacing/angry look, and the people say they are even more wild and daring/bold when they have not smoked their stuff/Nyaope. So that, this leads them to carrying out dastardly deeds, murder and what it takes just to get a fix. They are jaded, ashen and very 'blackened' and gaunt-looking-Ghost-like, and never ever wash.

The local lore has it that they no more beat them, once they catch them stealing, they simply pour water over them, and they end up howling like wild creatures with all the water coming down on them. Some say that this water acts like acid on them. There is some kernel of truth in that, but as to the validity of the claim, the jury is still out on that one.The behavior of these strung-up youth is appalling and galling.

It is also sad to see a wasted life moving like an ogre or zombie out of whack and stone to the max. This something to behold and it is devastating and crushing on some of our souls, mind and bodies. Our kids talk like they are having speech deformities, and they are bent and very wild-eyed-looking and are always on the prowl in search of another theft or robberies-to get another fix/high. Hooded thugs prowl the hood and rape and abduct and rob women as they are headed off to work in the wee hours of the mornings.

So many rapes, so many muggings-men are also mugged, and most times shot; assaults, murders and all kids of undeclared war on the our polity is causing a costly blow we will take many centuries to recover from, that I come here onto the Facebook collective and ask that something be done before it's too late, of which it is beginning to look like it is very late.As a temporary tangent, we have drug dealing in the coughing medicines sold in the Pharmacies or Chemist that are laced with cocaine, and now they are selling all over the place for around R15.00-are the hot item that is proliferating in our midst.

The name of that guy is Adcock Ingram, and the cough syrup is manufactured by the famous 'Broncleer' according to the presenter, and whose name, the journalist or hostess of the show is Nkepile Mabuse and the name of the show is "Check Point" on e-TV it was aired on 02. 06. 15 at 10:00 pm-and that is where I got this bit of information from. People are now addicted to this concoction, and it is marketed by a person, whose company name appears of the cough drops for infants, and only our Ancestors know what they are putting in this old cures for babies.

This is another issue I will be talking a bit about whenever I complete my researches.In the manufactories spotting and dotting the landscape, some of these youth are telling of how they have to wear latex gloves when making this Nyaope or some obscure drug mix-because it is hot and burns the skin; they even volunteer information as to the fact that they make it inside some tires, for they do not destruct just as quickly and for whatever reason.

There's a whole of deadly mixes of rat poison, Dagga, some disinfectant, ARV's Mandrax tablets and other natural salts/chemicals and an assortment of everything to produce this drug or drugs of the same ilk.As I am onto this piece, one of my friends just walked in complaining about the lack of electricity for the pas so many hours. He says that rumors has it that a copper cable has been stolen, just as I am writing about this issue here on this piece. We are under an attack and deluge of thefts perpetrated by these Nyaope users, and that is why some houses and sections of Orlando do not have electricity now-this was not due to power-load sharing.

People even steal water, that is in those locations that have these water meters. People are not working, and cannot afford pre-paid electricity, and metered water, which have been outsourced to foreign corporation/countries, and they are fleecing us so badly and leave us always in the cold and literally dry. Both youthful but shredded and emaciated looks of youth, girls and boys are dropping out of schools in droves and headed into these drug dens, they are emaciated, blackened, dry-deadened physiques, drooling and zombie-like spook-looking walking dead.

The poor once youthful great looking girls are smoking anything, have HIV/AIDS, sleep around with anyone and thoroughly abused sexually, sickly and bony looking with eyes drooping out of their sockets, very thin-looking, breasts sagging and wasted and gaunt faces; hair falling off, this for us is watching death incalculable and very dumbing and numbing-Daily.Then there's Madambi.

The character too lives around the 20s Street, and he too is into high tech, eking money out of the inhabitants, and he too is destroying the youth for he has created a well organized enterprise and has his henchmen, but he is not bigger than Nektsi.Funked-Up Society - A People On The Precipe Of The Dark HoleThis brings us to the "Hell House".

So dubbed because in it everything and anything happens or takes place. This is where the meat-grinder modus operandi is churning out corpses, Murders are routine and there is a general sense of intimidation that is the norm and credo. As for the Cops, they are nowhere to be seen, or the same thing happens when they arrest the Drug-lords, the thugs are always let go and they bribe their way out.Bribery is another scourge that is endemic amongst law-enforcement people in South Africa-it has become a sort of a culture of laissez fair and a carte balance spirit that has prevailed for some decades now.

In the Noordgesig Colored Township, there are Old ladies who sell what they call "Space Cookies". These are bought and eaten by the students of Noordgesig High School, and this leaves the kids High And smoked out/High. Thus the persisting problem of school drop-out rate as I have just touched upon above.At night, the poor working women, early risers and leavers headed to work in the dark, are susceptible to lurking murderers and rapist as they walk alone towards the required transportation to work.

There were patrols by local guys, but this has been sparse and sporadic at best, and the issues of being paid take precedence before anything else, let alone local people's safety. So, we have less patrols in the ungodly hours of the morning. Some Youth in our Block have been encouraged to do this till 6 am. This is not always the case, but the area is better now, for now.

The other underlying but not oft looked important issue, is the fact that we as a people have already beed deadened and conditioned by Apartheid that we are having a hard time coming out of that stalag and mental gulag. Of course we have long been in the Concentration Camps and prisons of Apartheid functioning and operating like the aforementioned Stalag and Gulag meatgiinders and psyche-hospitals that have contributed immensely to our present state of being and existence of our African of South African people.

We now have events called Marikana, a ruse and guise to distribute the drugs and consume liquor and carry on sex by its organizers, that in the end, these place end up with armies of these drug dealers: foot soldiers-who advertise and sell their drugs in these events, the illicit drugs and all forms of booze, and this ends up being an orgy of drugged-out and highly intoxicated youth, which is a setting for other things beyond the pale.Ketsi's children and other such-like people, have their children going to the best schools in the land.

This is unconscionable. This Ketsi self-styled potentate drive all sorts of cars(sits on a wheelchair, mind you) and has many girlfriends… go figure. We have no power to fight against these interlopers, and destroyers of our youth and communities. There needs to be something the people of goodwill here in Mzantsi can do.

This is going on as I speak and is not abating.It is a fact that the drugs have decimated families, youth and elderly people. It has left destruction and ruin in the townships throughout Soweto, but in this case, I will focus on Orlando.Drugs like Cocaine and Mandrax pills started proliferating in the Township around the early eighties and has now become a pandemic throughout different communities of Africans, Coloreds and Whites.

In Orlando East(Soweto), the inhabitants have been watching with dread and fear as their youth became zombies, sick, and died from this drug-which, when imbibed, makes its victims froth at the mouth and tear-up incessantly, walking unsteadily zombie-like walk and creates an ever increasing crave, leading to all sorts of crime that has this drug-besieged Township of Orlando teetering on the brink of lunacy and genocide.

This is a problem which has been thus far so utterly ignored that the residents of Orlando, rallied by the members of the CPF(Community Police Forum which was formed by the local Orlando station police force) along with and run by the local residents-who patrol and try to keep crime at a low minimum.

On the second Major Saturday of August 2013, a coalition of local Orlando residents. Their CPF Team and several policemen in their cars descended on the drug dens dotting the Township in each and every street.Recapping and reposting of the Maponya Saga [I penned many moons ago]: What The Citizens Of Orlando Have Attempted To Do Fighting Drugs In Their communities"Community Action and and Exhumation of Crime/Drugs" - Drug Ground Zero Soweto and Durban and Cape Town....

As the article above aptly shows we take note on this part of the article that the same sound of singing, became protestations when the coalition I had described above descended onto to the drug houses and dens within Orlando. A very disturbing picture began to emerge.The Jo'burg Metro police gave permission to the marchers, and provided the police force, and it was explained to the marchers that the agreement, and permission to approach the drug dealers was given.

With placards and a huge number of people began advancing to the 'known' Drug dens, and those who sold from street corners or shop stoops.The people went to the houses, containers used as phone phones booths and other illicit activities including the selling of "Nyaope"; The mob advised the police that the Zimbabweans, Nigerians, Pakistanis, and some Coloreds[along with locals] should be arrested and searched for drugs. In some houses in Orlando, they found drugs on the bodies of Old grannies, who were used as carriers.

Heading the large group was Councilor Matlaka(Councilor of Dube), along with 8(eight) police cars, about 15 policemen ant eh CPF patrollers were about 30, and the rest of the group consisted of a large number of undisclosed members of the local resident. Five young boys were arrested and were found to have drugs on their persons. Some of these dealers were women who had come from the rural areas and were very secretive as to who their suppliers were.

Others were resistant to the mob but caved in when they saw the mob's menacing bearing and intent.In the part of the Township called "Roma"[which is still Orlando], two houses were searched and drug paraphernalia was found; they also found a lot of stolen IDs and Marijuana in bags, along with credit cards and guns. Some of this stuff was found under the beds in some of these houses, or carelessly strewn all over the dirty and unkempt houses.In another areas of Orlando around a store called "Goodluck" several houses were without owners, and all sorts of evil and illicit and sordid activities have been taken place in plain sight and nobody could anything about it…

In one "Pink" Big House, the occupants tried to run away, but were apprehended had had on their person both 'Nyaope' and Marijuana and two guns.Maponya - (The Nyaope Potentate whose fiefdom is Orlando)In the area around the Grounds and Tennis Courts(Known Generally as 'Escort'(Still in Orlando) is the headquarters of the Nyaope sales. Hoards of youth and well-off middle class Africans, along with cops(who are in the pay of this guy), who has in his employ, his grandmother, and siblings-the Police and local ANC honchos.

One of the 'carriers' who serves his customers on his behalf, was found with six plastics bags and she was in a close to comatose state…The locals who were in the march, alerted the police that Maponya's grandmother had all the drugs hidden in her body, underneath her clothes. She was very rude and arrogant and dared the police to touch her. She was arrested and searched on arrival in that the police station On seeing what's happening, Maponya attempted to escape, put on a disguise but the citizens saw to it that he was apprehended.

When he was brought into the parked police cars, he insisted that he should sit in the front with the police driver. All the time he was wagging his finger and berating the police, and none responded to his charade. From this incident it was apparent that the Police Commander and his side-kicks(police grunts) were in the pay of this lilliputian drug potentate.The community, who have been seeing the police and other people of note come to buy or get paid by him over a period of time, lost their cool.

They threatened to riot and demanded that Maponya be put in the back of the squad car with all other arrestees. Eventually he was put in the back with all other small-time drug dealers, and he was clearly miffed about this and he carried on his protestations.What got him off the hook, was the directive the police said that he could not be arrested if he did not have any drugs on him. Those who worked for him refused to snitch or rat out on him.

They all denied having received or brought this stuff from him-and the junkies were intimidated into denying that he supplied or sold them the "Nyaope"... This technicality, helped set him free and he was released without being charged.The crowd moved to an area in Orlando too, called 'Paramount,' and they went into the ramshackle shacks filling up the yards of most houses in Orlando, and in them they found and routed drug dens , prostitution harems, and 3 people were arrested there-considered to be the main bosses.

As far as one can tell, "Nyaope" is sold in each and every street in Orlando.The denizens of Orlando were disgruntled and felt betrayed, because everyone knew who(Maponya) was really distributing drugs wholesale in the Township, and he walked scot-free, due to a flimsy technicality in the law so that, in the end, the people wanted the Minister of the Police, Mrs. Raphiyega and the government to become involved.

The people finally decided to call a meeting in a week of two, to report back to the community these events, and have decided to take the case to the Provincial government and they want the Premier to take this case over.Most of those residents who partook in the raid, have to go around the Township armed"Drug And Chemical Warfare On the People Of Mzantsi"Below I will link an article which no longer talks about "Nyaope, but "Whoonga" which is a potent and highly addictive mixture of Marijuana, heroin, and HIV Medications.

The same with "Nyaope" and other concoctions, which also include the life-saving pills for HIV-Aids, and literally makes waste of the users and death, sickness, crime, homicide, rape and so forth have spiked. This is a crisis, and it needs to be addressed aggressively, or we stand to loose not only generations, but a whole nation of people high on home-made designer drugs which are decimating communities throughout South Africa with unequaled impunity.

Until the day we Africans of Mzantsi stop thinking of and for our individual selves only, until they day we Africans of Mzantsi say enough is enough; and, until we come to our senses and go and see for ourselves what I am talking about or everyone is writing about what these drugs are doing to us, our people, relatives and communities[Nation], we will forever be in our cocoons and do nothing, and we are clearly facing something more dangerous than HIV AIDs(Which is still battering and wiping the core of our communities), we will in the end taken-snuffed by the genocide we are now facing.

There is more to the story as to how these drugs came into the country, and I will be writing an article tracing the origins of this scourge and addiction.We are really much better than this, lest we forget that.... We can all 'wax political' to our egos content.. But this, is not going away, instead, it is threatening our very existence as the indigenous of the country of South Africa...

We are in the clutches of a very dangerous and deadly grip of a drug epidemic whose likes has never been seen before in our country. We need to begin to help ourselves and come to these communities and route the drugs and dealers consistently and brutally, or it is they, as we are seeing, who will run our Townships(they already are) or either its us who will have the finally say, and control and run our townships and communities... Whither Mzantsi....

The article above was made possible by the people of Orlando I talked to. All I did was cobble up all the interviews, and these are what I formed into the narrative above. This is seriously Grassroots news and Grassroots intelligence, which is out there for all who wish to report on the events and issues that are taking place amongst our own people. The newspaper will not put it in the way that Malcolm explained above as I cited him.

We have to begin to write our own news and stories, and talk to the people Face-To-Face, and can then afterwards post it on Facebook. Our people have the information as to what's going down in the Township… We just need to get out there, be amongst them, and write these stories, and show them what we have written, in order to get even more gruesome accounts of the lives of our African People Of Mzantsi, today,here on the Viral soup.

Dr. John Henrik Clarke - You Have No Friends (full)

Cabral On African Power And African Democracy

The African Peoples Struggle: Principles And Political Practice:

'The Struggle Of The People, By the People, for The People, Through The People'

"There can be no doubt that it is our people who wage our struggle, through their children as militants, leaders, combatants, militia, etc. The fundamental strength is our people, themselves. Our population, or rather the population linked to the work of our party, mobilized and organized by our Party, has from the beginning fed our struggle, borne sacrifices for our struggle, and so has been principal strength for of our struggle. It would have been impossible for us to wage the struggle, in the era of clandestinity, were it not that our people kept us alive among them like fish in water.

"The enemy know that it is our own people who share in the struggle, and so they make efforts to separate the part of our people who are Party and the part of our people who are population, to draw from us this principal strength in the liberation struggle, namely the support of the mass of the people. We might say that our struggle has more potential for victory, the more we can keep on our side the support of the mass of the people in our land. The Portuguese know this too, and so they are making every effort to take this support from us.

"Our struggle is for our people, because its objective, its purpose, is to satisfy the aspirations, dreams and desires of our people: to lead a decent and worthy life, as all the peoples in the world want, to have peace in order to build progress in their land, to build happiness for their children. We want everything we win in this struggle to belong to our people and we have to do our utmost to form an organization such that even if some want to divert the conquests of the struggle to their own advantage, our people will not let them. This is very important.

"Our people now do really feel that the struggle is theirs. Not only because it is their children who have the weapons in their hands. Not only because it is their children who study and are trained as cadres, nurses, doctors, engineers, technicians, etc. Not only because it is their children who lead. but also because even i the villages, the militiamen or civilian population take up what principally symbolized our struggle: weapons. It is not by chance, or for any other reason, that our party leadership has given weapons, and constantly gives more, to our population.

"It is precisely so that no one should take it into his head that only those who take up arms in the 'people's army' or in the 'guerilla forces are effectively struggling for results in this struggle. The more weapons there are for our supporters, the more certainty our population and our people will that the struggle is really tiers, and the fewer illusions there will be in the heads of our combatants and leaders that the struggle is their exclusive concern.

"We are struggling for the progress of our land. We must make all the sacrifices to succeed with progress for our land of Guine and Cape Verde. We must put an end to all injustices, miseries and suffering. We must guarantee for the children born in our land today and tomorrow a certainty that no barrier or wall should be put in their way. They must go forward, according to their capacities, to give their utmost.

"They must constantly improve the lot of our people and our land, serving not only our interests but also those of Africa and of all mankind. That is why from the start our Party set out out on the best course for this, namely, organization based on mobilizing our people, mobilizing the population of our land for the struggle against Portuguese colonialism."Our Party has trained the children of our land to mobilize the people of our land.

This work was no laughing matter.. Many of you here, young lads who are today responsible workers in the Party, cannot imagine how difficult this work was. Moreover, we have organized within the framework of our Party a large proportion of the population of our land. This was the "principal political strength" of our struggle, which provided the potential for our struggle to advance as well as it has advanced. We must train our people, we must train ourselves - leaders and militants of our Party, our combatants who are making the sacrifice today - to defend at all costs the conquests our people are making through their struggle.

"Today the people born in the bush, who yesterday could express no views on their lives and on their destiny, can express their views, can make decisions. They can decide issues in the Party committees and in the people's courts, where the descendants of our land have shown the ability to try errors, crimes and other wrong-doings committed by other descendants of our land. This is further clear evidence that "this struggle is of our people, by our people and for our people"

"But various Party comrades, with high or low responsibilities, and even ordinary combatants have not understood this very well. They have tried to turn the struggle a little to their advantage, after all they are the people, it would seem. The struggle of our people, by our people, but for them. This is one of the most serious mistakes that can be made in a struggle like ours.

"We cannot in the least allow our armed forces, our militants or our responsible workers forget for a single instant that the greatest consideration, respect and dedication is owed to the people of our land, to our population, above all in the liberated areas of our land. "Anyone who is ready to die from some bullet in this war but is able to show lack of respect for our people, the village folk, the population, will die without knowing why he is dying,or dies under a delusion.

"The more we an do in our land to raise the morale of our people, to give them greater courage and greater enthusiasm for the Party, the more it helps the present and the future of our people, helps our Party. Anything that is done to destroy the population's confidence in us, to bully the population, to show lack of consideration for them, to steal their good, to abuse their sons and daughters, is the worst crime that a combatant comrade or a responsible worker can commit.It is damages our Party, and damages the future and present of our land.

"It is better that we should be few in number but incapable of doing any injury to the population of our land than that we should be numerous but include folk capable of causing harm. For anyone among us who turns the population against our Party, to mistrust the Party, to lose confidence in the Party, is the best ally the Portuguese could have.

"You know - and what I am saying is not in my imagination - that there are comrades who behaved badly towards our population. fortunately the situation has become much better because the Party has been vigilant in this matter.

"So, at each moment of this great struggle we are waging, we must focus on two phases: one, against the colonialist capitalist ruling classes in Portugal and imperialism which want to dominate our land economically and spiritually(meaning ideas from the mind), which might arise against our people's progress on the path of liberty, independence and justice. These demand courageous struggle against imperialist agents. but in addition permanent and determined struggle against those who, even if they are militants, responsible workers or leaders of the Party, do anything which could prejudice our people's march to total conquest of their dignity, their liberty and their progress.

"One other important principle is that of "Independence in our thought and in our action." (Amilcar Cabral)

South African African Identity

Revisiting The Clalamity And Saga Of South Africa: Identity Crisis

When I say that Mzantsi is on the cusp of implosion of a magnitude never before seen nor experienced in the land, I am not kidding. There has yet to be a whole mass psychiatric help for the victims of former separate development, by the British, and Apartheid, by the Boers, and total social dysfunction by the ANC. That is really a toll order.

For us to be able to wrap our heads around this massively colossal social miasma, we are going to inadvertently revert to consulting with our history. Wilson writes:

A manipulation of an individual's past is a manipulation of his time dimension, a warping of his time which warps his perception, warps his experience and perception of himself. People who play with our history are playing with our sense of time, playing with our sense of place who we are, and what we're about.

"Aaronson gave some subjects posthypnotic suggestions that elevated their past, present, or future; he gave others a vastly expanded past, present, or future. The consequences were profound.

"With no future, people feel a loss of identity and a euphoric, mystical sensation, free from both anxiety and motivation. One student found himself "in boundless immanent present." Expanding the future, on the other hand, cancelled all fears of death and induced serenity, contemplation and a feeling of self-fulfillment.

"Being robbed of a past brought on a semi-infantile torpid state, and the students with a dilated past became egocentric and inhibited."

"Canceling the present was the most disturbing, however. One subject turned catatonic; others became severely depressed and almost schizophrenic. Stopping subjective time altogether produced an eerie sensation of death. "The world moves on, but I don't," one student observed.

Aaronson's conclusion:

"Life must carry some sense of direction, from past to present or present to future, to seem worth living. People given a present shorn of a past and future become preoccupied with death and behave like schizophrenics."

Wilson adds:

"People who manipulate the past and present manipulate one's mentality, sanity, contact with reality and the ability to deal with reality. In other words, the manipulation of history creates real effects in the individual's personality.

"Our history not being taught to us correctly ensures that our potential will be forever underdeveloped as a people, and that we will not challenge those who rule over us. Intellectual structures and powers are undeveloped when we suffer from 'amnesia'; they are restricted and alienated. Some of my Black(African) students say, "Hey, I know nothing about Black(African) History; but I know Math. I know Computer Science, and I know this and that. So, apparently, it didn't do me much harm."

"Being cut off from your past only means you have gained knowledge at the cost of being alienated, you have gained an alienated knowledge. Alienated knowledge can only be used in the interest of the aliens. Look at who you work for once you know Computer Science and don't know your history" That's one of the unwritten tules. They will teach you Math and Science and so forth to the degree that you forget what and who you are — your history — and forget your concerns with your people.

"Because it's only when you are unconnected that you can be of use to the aliens You cannot use alienated knowledge for yourself. Knowledge must be connected and contained in a historical structure, in a cultural structure, if it is to work for a particular people. That's why you can get degrees in business Administration and build no businesses. You can be the CEO of Xerox, yet you won't build your own."

When one sis shorn off one's past and does not see the direction of one's future and is very uncertain of one's present,then one cannot tell from whence comes and where one is going, where one is — and suffers as a result.

"History is what creates a shared identity in a people. It is based on that shared identity that they act collectively. To take away a people's history, to degrade their history is to degrade their sense of shared identity, is to remove the basis upon which they must behave collectively and reach their goals collective[Unified as a Nation] That is why the history is rewritten, and why people get alarmed about it.

When we suffer from social amnesia, we forget the deb we owe to past and future generations. We then misinterpret our accomplishments as solely our own individual achievements. When we suffer from social manias we identify with abstractions: "I am not Black; I am not African; I am a human being. I am a citizen of the earth." Sterile, abstract identity. The closer we get to it, the less we see of it, and the more we recognize that it has no meaning. "what is that? Who is that? What does that stand for?" It's empty, and people who identify themselves with these abstractions are also empty and experience their lives as empty, as people who have no feelings.

They identify with the abstraction so as to escape feelings. Therefore, we see them detached and cut-off from themselves as persons, as well as from their people. In fact, they use their abstract identity to escape their responsibilities to their own people and to escape the pain and struggle that happens today to be part of our situation.

"When we become socially amnesic, we forget our location in time and space, because history is about locating one's self in time and space. History is a grid, a set of coordinates that permit the individual to locate himself in reference to otherTheo. points in the world. History is a mathematical concept, and it is a geometrical concept; it locates and positions one relative to other things."

History affords us the opportunity to put our Historical and cultural self in an Africentered Perspective and African World View

Steve Bantu Biko

Forward Arching African Modern society

If then, we are going to take control and propagate our history, we had better get ourselves ready for the task ahead. Asa teaches:

"There is no way around serious and disciplined study. We must study, and study more. Study, will reintroduce us to our tradition as African people; a beneficial tradition. Nothing in the general culture requires us to do this and so we must set our own standards. We must do tis work for ourselves, on our own initiative. There is no chance, whatsoever, that we can launch an appropriate socialization effort without study, without structure, and without habit, tied to our own heritage.

"Nothing is more pitiful than to be led by those who have not done their homework. Around the world, some African and non-African lead panel discussions, public meetings, and more, are held to address the African agenda. While often well intentioned, the meetings feature disorganized sound bites, confusion, and a lack of synthesis and mission. They are merely repeating what Africans have said more than 200 years ago. Because there was no study, Africans behave as though they are presenting new information.

"Had the studied and not been taught to avoid or resist their own history, they would not be reinventing the wheel. When you have not studied, you represent the accurate mage of a disorganized, unfocused and controlled group. Unfortunately, too many individuals stand ready to enter the limelight with no clear vision.

We must conduct study groups in every community for leaders and followers. This is our basic preparation for economical and political action. More important, this is our basic preparation for healing, renewal and for developing our vision of destiny.

"No public schools anywhere in the African world, deal with the matters reflecting African centered perspectives. Sadly, very few of the organizations that are under the control of African people transit our profound cultural heritage. This is a sorry condition.

There is o way that we can survive as a people without study. There is no way that study can serve us unless we ACT. On what we learn. Knowing is not enough. We must construct the world that we want. Nothing comes to those who wait.

"We have all that we need to do what is necessary. We can come to know what we need to know. We, however, must choose to do what is necessary to make the sacrifices that we need to make. Today, we have many resources, books, computers, etc. Still, we waster far more resources that we need to take care of the socialization requirements. Now is the time to save us. The struggle continues."

Now, it is important to pay attention to what Wilson and Asa are saying above. We have lost ourselves, and we can regain ourselves.Wilson explains to us how that happened that we lose ourselves; Asa teaches us how and why to study in order to regain and retain our cultures and traditions and humanity. This two ways of thinking, doing seeing and being are the very disciplines we need to implant in ourselves and transplant/implement within our midst without let-up or stopping. By following the directives and advises doled by these African History Master teachers, we are in a position to give ourselves a fighting chance and knowing where we are going.

We Are Losing All The Money In Our Money Pot

Copy-catting The Broederbond: We Are A Dysfucntional Caricature Of Our Former Masters

The New ANC Broederbond... A Poor And Sad Copy Of Their Former Colonizers

One of the most disturbing problem is that we are still not yet talking about the African people of South Africa in a clear and bold way. We do overload our persona and over-inflate the political significance of what we are doing or not doing; of what our leaders are doing or not-and not doing. This is crucial, for we are now at the crossroads of totally losing our land.

As a people we are under siege from various point in our decrepit existence. We are not even in a potion to see and acknowledge, and we look askance, conveniently to massage and cuddle our fragile and broken egos. Whilst the nation is crumbling, many of us are still seeking the glory of self-expression and mass recognition without really even doing much about it, except drop in on FB, and imagine that have arrived.

We copy-cat so many nations, and we are even willing to forego our cultures, languages and customs, and begin to teach our child Mandarin: reading and writing it; Chinese history and philosophy, behind the ruse that we are doing it for business connection in the Future, with China, whose stock Market is crumbling, because it is based on Western Capitalists modals and models.

We are trying to get the Americans off our backs, and we are willingly sacrificing our own people just to be 'liked' by China. We are allowing the Chines to bring millions of Chinese instructors to teach our children how to become Chinese. We have a Mickey Mouse Circus of Parliamentarians, who are haggling with one another, and Western investment interests are backing off, the Rand is now R20 to one Pound; The Dollar is nearing R1 for $14.

We are lagging world-wide in job creation, and our health system is in shambles because we have hired, n all spheres of governance our relatives, friends and hangers-on-we glorify nepotism and cronyism; We wax apolitical about issues that do not help advance, teach nor empower our people, politically, economically and historically. We find people dissing reading and books, and giving credence to non-reading, nor what should be done to re-set our educational system.

Poverty is rife and people are really hungry, and food exorbitantly prohibitively expensive. We are all onlookers and spectators as our youth and communities are being decimated by designer drugs and multifarious disbursement of drugs in our communities. Many of us are now believing the bogus charge that we do not like Africans from North Africa, whereas, the other, a friend of mine, in a private hospital, was thrown out of the word, and denied a chance to eat her food, because the Nurse, from Nigeria, had discharged her, two days short of the agreed-upon discharge date between her Medicaid and the hospital.

For me to point out these things, in the country of my birth, I am labelled xenophobic. Well, what his means is this: I can do as I please in Botswana, as I see fit and when they counter my bad deeds and attitudes against, I will call them xenophobic; go to Europe, France, where one will see pregnant African women dragged in the street and flung into the back of the police vans and deported, for being Africans in France; Germany is now taking in refugees, but it is throwing out African they regard as illegal-whilst being humanitarian to Hungarians, Syrians and so forth.

The abuse of women and children is appalling by any standards. And some of us use the mores, norms, values and standards they imbibe from TV(Which we do not control), Ads, talking point, lingua franca and western educated perspectives and perceptions to obfuscate our ignorance about ourselves, and they way we are looking down upon ourselves as a "Nation"(Still to be formed), and African people, amidst each other.

Lots of interpersonal jealousies, individual and group put downs, back-biting and rehashing a past that should inform the present, but many remain incarcerated in past that is not conducive to the conditions of African people's of Mzantsi; rough dismisal of each other's points of view, disregard of others miserable oppressed conditions, the immoral unhealthy attitudes of health-gives, our downright and dumb parliamentarians, acting out as buffoons in a system they inherited from their colonizers; ineffective so-called opposition parties gloating on personal issues with nothing getting done in parliament.

Many of us, talk about their 'self-achievements' as to how they pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps, whilst the armies of the poor around us do not have shoes nor boots on their feet. Our people have lost a lot of body mass and many are miserably unclad. Every vulture is gnawing at the skeleton of our post-Apartheid cadavers and smoothing our national bones clean-white.

Many of us live and act out Amnesia to all this social maladies that we are dealing with. If you can do and say thing, I will say and do things even much better than you. Many are trying to cough out sanguine smooth-macked pimp-like talk to the poor, and meanwhile wax academic, which is well and good. But that type of borrowed erudition does not erase nor eliminate our torrid conditions we as a people are existing in and coping with in this day and age in Mzantsi.

To put it bluntly, there are many enemies of the poor people of Mzantsi and people in other countries living the same conditions as we are facing todayThere are many reasons why we here in Mzantsi are in denial about the genocide facing us-and nature and role of our enemies.

Sankara wrote:

"But who are these enemies of the people?They are to be found both here at home and abroad. At this very moment, they are trembling, but you must expose them. You must drive them back into their holes. The enemies of the people here inside the country are all those who have illicitly taken advantage of their social position and their place in the bureaucracy to enrich themselves.

"By means of bribery, maneuvers, and forged documents they have become shareholders in different companies. They are now involved in financing business and obtaining approval for this or that enterprise — in guise of helping Upper Volta[In Our Case-Mzantsi]. These are the enemies of the people. they must be exposed. They must be combated. We will combat them with you.[How many of the ruling and private sector elite are willing to make such a commitment...?!?!]

"Who are the enemies of the people? They are that group of bourgeois who enrich themselves dishonestly through fraud and bribery, through the corruption of state officials, so that they can bring all kinds of products to Upper Volta(Mzantsi in our case), increasing the price tenfold. These are the enemies of the people. This section of the bourgeoisie must be fought against, and we will fight against it.

"Who are the enemies of the people? They are that group of men in politics who travel through the countryside exclusively at election time. These politicians are convinced that only they can make our country work. But we in our party are convinced that seven million political beings, of the seven million people in our population, are capable of leading this country(we believe in a motley crew becoming filthy rich, here in Mzantsi)... We should combat these enemies of our country, and we will combat them with you.

"The enemies of the people are likewise those who keep us in ignorance. Under the cover of spiritual guidance and tradition(With us, segregated politics), they exploit our people, instead of serving the real spiritual, , traditional, and social interests(Here in Mzantsi we are learning, albeit slowly that these are our downfall-and are really met by our elected officials)"The enemies of the people are also beyond our borders. Their base is among the unpatriotic people here in our midst at every level of our society — civilian, military me, health fields, between men and women, old and young, in towns and country-sides. These enemies are from abroad — neocolonialism, imperialism — are among us.

"From its base among these stateless men, those who have rejected their homeland, who have rejected Upper Volta(Mzantsi, in our stead), who have, in fact, rejected the people of Upper Volta(we see it happening to us here in Mzantsi), this enemy abroad is organizing a series of attacks. These will come in two stages. First will come the non-violent, and then the violent stage.

"At this moment , we are living through the nonviolent stage. This enemy abroad — imperialism, neocolonialism — is attempting to sow confusion in the minds of the Voltaic people(People Of Mzantsi). According to their newspapers, radios, television[and Internet] Upper Volta(Mzantsi) is all fire and blood...

"Imperialism is everywhere, making us think like it, submit to it, and go along with its maneuvers by spreading its culture far and wide with the help of misinformation. We must bar the road to this imperialism.

"As I said, it will proceed to a violent stage. It is this imperialism that landed troops in certain countries we know. Imperialism armed those who are killing our brohters in South Africa(Today, those who were being killed by Imperialism, are now in cahoots with all its biddings and dictates).

"Imperialism again is the assassin of the Lumumbas, Cabrals, and Kwame Nkrumahs. Theillicity say that we want to out nationalizations. Our people cannot understand and are not told how and why anyone, not of our nation, can come up and start an enterprise for which they've been granted [illicit and illegal] favors. — All kinds of tax exemptions — on the pretext of creating jobs and contributing to the economic development of the country, and then, after a certain number of years of the most brazen exploitation, announce personnel cuts.

"On what conditions wee you granted these favored? On the condition that you create jobs for the Voltaic(Mzantsi) people. Today, when you have squeezed the lemon dry, you want to throw it away. No! This time we say No! Our enemies say that we have proclaimed freedom of expression, and of the press, only to begin to restart this freedom.

I say, we know that many deals have been dealt and are still being worked on as of the writing of this piece. We do not know, as an African collective, how this deals are made and reached. We have no jobs, a significant percentage of our African people. Sankara points out: "In no way do we wish to put an end to freedom.

But we say that then freedom to criticize brings with it the freedom to protest. And freedom for honest men should not mean freedom for the dishonest.[We will take away] the freedoms of those who harm the people and leave them free to serve the people.

"We cannot allow the freedom to lie to and brainwash the collective consciousness of the Voltaic(Mzantsi) people. This would be to work against the interests of the masses of the African people."

We can take the high road oft trudged in matters such as these, or we just pause a bit, and listen to each other as we babble here on FB. There is much of what I have said that is printed and posted in various forms here on this FB social media, but there's nothing that is coming out of it.

Listening to the people in the streets is devastating.

Many decry the fact that they do not understand what is going on in our country; some point out that our country is lost, and we have lost it in the process; many state facts pointing out to the dysfunction that is the ANE; a lot of the poor state that if one is not ANC, nor if one does not pay obeisance to Zuma; or show that they are one of the ANC people, they are ostracized, and in many cases offed.

These are some of the talking point swirling in the realm and sphere of the dispossessed and poor. Many people may want to dispute this… but take a walk, off FB, and talk face-to-face with the masses, anywhere anytime,and the things I have said, will be heard more oft than not.Wilson advices us that, "If we want to know why we behave the way we do, then, we must know our history; the unconscious mind must be made conscious.

"Consequently, when the European makes us unconscious of our own history, we not only become unconscious of our history as knowledge, we become unconscious of the sources of our behavior as person and as a people; and our own behavior becomes a mystery."Why do African-folks act like that?" We get discouraged. We give up. "We ain't gonna straighten them(i.e., African people) out man!" Because we can't figure it out.

This is what the ANC is using to divide and conquer its own polity and whole of the people in south Africa. If one were to read and study the history of the Broederbond, those who have, will understand why I sub-titled the piece that it is "A poor copy of its former Colonizers."

One thing the Afrikaner Breoederbonders achieved was efficiency and maximum positive output and gain for the Afrikaner people. The ANC is doing the exact opposite of that, with a lot of corrupted inefficiencies, corruption, no discipline fiscally, and lagging sadly behind in matters and philosophies and policies of governance.

We see than trying to gag the press and freedom of expression, and limited access to the Internet and FB posts. So far, they have managed to make the whole country and African Society and other ethnic group completely dysfunction on many levels and in a myriad ways.

Biko penned "I write What I like".. I am pushing the idea of Saying It Like It Is. We are going nowhere fast, as a people. We are a lot nation, and there is yet to be some hope in the turbulent horizon lying ahead. It is going to take more than showing off our verbal gymnastic to ward of the genocide we are facing as a people. We are going to have to begin to put together some semblance of unity, by whatever means necessary... for the good of the African people of Mzantsi.

We know that the Nationalist Party consolidated power in South Africa under the auspices of the Broederbond-whose dictates were: The banning of tradeUnions; banning of mass political organizations; censorship of ideas; indoctrination through education; building of a massive armed machinery/in our cases, cadres and political ideologies; obedience to the Boer ideals and philosophy/ANC: adherence to its dictates and importance of belonging to the ANC for anything in life.

The ANC, like the Borederbond, has made , which was regarded as the bride of Christ, a servant of politics.' This can be gleaned from their election mantra that 'the ANC will rule South Africa until Christ comes.'-among the declaration of the ruling Party in Zuma, just like Verwoerd is in the same cart if one recalls Verwoerd, when accused that he belonged to the Borederbond and that he must resign, retorted:

"Ones membership of any organization does not necessarily mean that one is more loyal to that organization than to one's country. I deny that I cannot fulfill my duties as Prime Minister satisfactory as a result of my membership of this organization.

If people took some time and studied the power house that the Broederbond was behind the Apartheid regime, the present day government in South Africa want to behave, as a group, like the Broederbond, but the problem remains that this what brought them to power-the defeat of the ideas and wishes and plans of the Broederbond, of which they are trying to be sorry picture of, today in South Africa...

On November 14, 1931, an extra-ordinary Bondsraad, later to be known as the Economic Bondsraad, was held in Johannesburg. Up for discussion was the establishment of an Afrikaner commercial bank because the banks of the time exercised a power grip, especially over the farmers. So, after a series of investigations by various commissions, Volkskas (Kooperatief) Beperk, the first Afrikaans commercial bank, was established on April 3, 1934.

Now the capital of the Afrikaner could be mobilized to provide financial backing for Afrikaner business undertakings.

In 1938 the Broederbond capitalized on the enthusiasm generated by the Afrikaner Voortrekker centenary festival, to build on the economic interests of the Afrikaner. As a result, the Economic Volkskongres on October 3, 1939 was held in Bloemfontein.

One of the most important organisations to emerge from the conference was the Economic Institute. The Economic Institute gave birth to the Redingsdaadbond (RDB), an organisation which raised funds to assist Afrikaners in economic difficulty, and also to assist with the financing of Afrikaans business undertakings.

By 1943, the RDB had more than 50 000 members across the country. The congress also led to the establishment of Federale Volksbeleggings Beperk (FVB), whose aim was to weld together in one company, a portion of Afrikaner capital and to make it available for the establishment or take-overs of commercial and industrial enterprises.

A lot happened thereafter, including the all-famous Afrikaanse Handelsinstituut, whose main objective was to promote the interests of Afrikaner businesses.

From this, it is clear that the Bond played a major role in the mobilisation of Afrikaner capital and enterprise to start Afrikaner-owned companies from Ground Zero. Some of these companies can only be described as the country’s economic monuments employing thousands of people. These enterprises have turned some Afrikaner families and individuals into billionaires.

This context is significant. Just look around you and tell me what you see. What has happened to our elected African officials up to now? Go figureAfrikaners mobilised Afrikaner capital to empower themselves and turn around the economic fortunes of a poor nation of people. Their drive and commitment carried them forward.

Everything is connected. You cannot invest without capital. We find out leaders siphoning-off billons formthe public coffers and binge on their highway robbery success in various gloating and show-offy ways to their poor brethren. We are most videos, those of us who are the so-called elite, against our brothers, and lame when it comes to acceding outr rights and material wealth to foreigners. What springs forth, is that our present govrnment really does not know what they are doing-neither anthing about proper civil and ethical governance.

It is us, the poor of South Africa we should be teaching, assiduously, the citizens of South Africa their Bill Of Rights in free classes and very seriously. This is the least we can do as a people of smoothing what's doable that will help with itsy-bitsy steps towards Unity.

There are many way towards achieving Unity; there are many ways that should be utilized to achieve this Unity. I propose taking time out and teaching ourselves and out people our Bill Of Rights… That little, we can do....

We shall Have To begin Saving Our Money, Ourselves, For And With Our People...

It Is Us Africans Of Mzantsi Who Matter; It Is Us We Should Be talking To, About And With...

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